At NextLevel Thinking, our hiring philosophy is really quite simple. We have a deep desire to bless those that come to work with us, and a hope for them to bless us in unexpected ways. With that unique expectation, it’s amazing to see what happens to the individuals involved and for our team as a whole. This idea is really what drives us and our intern program.

A number of years ago, we decided to start a summer intern program at our firm. In order for this to be a meaningful endeavor for us and our interns, we established five guiding principles that have served us well over the years. They are as follows:

Deliver An On-Boarding Meeting – this ensures that everyone starts on the same page and that our interns understand our organizational purpose of challenging organizations to discover who they are, understand what business they are actually in, and confidentially articulate their why. This effort really seems to pay off as the summer progresses.

Provide Real Work Assignments – providing real work is the most important principle of our program because it gives interns a true sense of what a job is going to be like once they graduate from college. That’s why we call our intern program Your Thoughts Count.

Encourage Client Interaction – the real work mentioned in point number one often entails client interaction. Our interns almost always have the opportunity to showcase their work in front of our clients. They are sometimes nervous prior to and during these presentations, but the confidence they gain during these exchanges is unbelievably valuable for them going forward.

Facilitate Team Interaction – our interns hit the ground running from the very beginning. They are included, and encouraged, to participate in all internal team meetings, as well as those client meetings where their involvement is on-going.

Deliver Feedback – our official feedback process is called Hang Time. We aim to give our interns ongoing encouragement and feedback along the way, and we also conduct Hang Time with them at the end of the summer. We focus on two important questions: let’s discuss your areas of greatness, and let’s discuss areas, that if worked on, would make you even more spectacular.

What a blessing our intern program has been!