The late summer months mark the closing stretch of a term loathed by students and employers alike: unpaid internships.

Maybe my math is a bit fuzzy there (actually I’m sure it is because I’m a numbers guy), but these resume-building, supplemental hiring opportunities are rarely held in high esteem by either side — especially when you attach the word “unpaid” to it.

Many students have wasted entire semesters and summers in internship placements lacking structure, engagement, and legitimate work experience in the name of career exploration. The same is true for businesses that have actually lost productivity to interns who are uninspired, impatient, or just uninterested in the company. (But I’m getting academic credit for this, right?)

As a rapidly-growing company in the information technology marketing space, we place a great deal of time, energy, and resources into developing young talent. We CAN’T afford a bad internship experience for either side, which is why we CAN afford paid internship programs, sometimes called apprenticeships.

The career benefits for students go far beyond a regular paycheck (though for 18-22-year-olds, that certainly helps). Approximately 66 percent of students who complete paid internships secure job offers after graduation, compared to only 43.7 percent of those who work unpaid internships. Many paid interns also expect to make more money than those that are unpaid once they get their next job.

But what’s in it for the businesses that are investing time and money into those students? In our experience, a lot. Below are a few reasons why we always pay our interns:

1. We Want To Attract the Best Candidates

Research shows 39.2 percent of internships are still unpaid. But with sites such as Salary.com and Glassdoor, smart intern candidates are discovering their value. They know they deserve to be paid for their skills, and these sites help them find the companies that do.

Paying for internships gives us the opportunity to put TechnologyAdvice in front of the best interns early in their search and makes our current interns more likely to recommend us to their friends and classmates.

2. We Want Them To Take the Internship Seriously

With some internships paying $4,000-8,000 a month, especially among tech companies, interns are more motivated to treat a paid internship opportunity like the real job that it is. A paid internship also gives company leadership more flexibility in assigning projects and provides interns with ownership over their work and motivation to take risks.

3. We Want Them To Show Up On Time

Often, unpaid interns are full-time college students who have hours of classes, homework, and a minimum wage job as well as their internship. That’s not a sustainable practice, and it leads to crazy schedules and little sleep. If we’re making our interns responsible for producing quality work and meeting deadlines, then we want their undivided attention.

4. We Want Them To Learn To Pay Their Dues, Not Be Hazed

It’s not going to be every day and it’s definitely not their main responsibility, but being paid to make an occasional coffee run is a lot better than not getting anything for doing it every day. Every job will come with a few tedious tasks that people don’t like to do. Those tasks go by faster when you’re making money.

5. We Want Them To Be Part of Our Team

We’re big on engaging our team, building relationships, and having some fun when the work is over. We want our student interns to be part of that dynamic as well. Unpaid interns often operate on a shoestring budget or a crazy schedule, meaning they miss out on chances to bond with teammates after hours or celebrate the victories they’re helping us achieve.

6. We Want To Hire Our Best Interns Into Full-Time Positions

Approximately 25 percent of our current team started as interns, so we mean it when we say we’re committed to the professional development of young talent. We view internships as three-month-long job interviews — if you show us you can be an asset to our team, then we’ll make you a full-time part of it. Doing this also saves time and resources in the hiring process. Interns who become full-time team members are already on board and up to speed with our processes, goals, and mission.

7. We Like Not Being Sued

Oh yeah, how about not being the next target in stories like this one? Taking advantage of unpaid labor is coming back to bite organizations after the U.S. Department of Labor laid out the framework for unpaid internships. Employers need to have a structured internship program to avoid conflicts down the road.

After all, an internship isn’t supposed to be a one-way street. The experience is best when both the employer and the student get as much — if not more — out of the program as they put into it.

And internships don’t have to be limited to current high school, college, or graduate students. Recent graduates programs can also help newly-graduated students get their foot in the door of an industry. This way, companies can also get interns for longer than a summer internship.

We’re currently taking applications for multiple positions, including remote internships. If you’d like to work in a fast-paced, fun environment for a great hourly wage and a variety of other perks (catered lunches, monthly team outings, and ping pong to name a few), check us out! Interested students can apply here or visit our careers page for more information.

Does your company employ interns? Share your tips on keeping them engaged!

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We see a solution where others see a problem. We see opportunity where others see risk. We are motivated by critics, empowered by innovation, and hungry for knowledge. We act now, think later, and fear only complacency.

But really, who are we?

Everyone has their own list of characteristics that successful entrepreneurs and start-up companies need. There’s passion, perseverance, positivity, and the like. I want to go a little deeper. Who are we? How old are we? How do we work? What do most of us truly have in common?

For instance, did you know that immigrants make up 26 percent of entrepreneurs in the United States (but only 13 percent of the population), or that one in 25 business leaders may be psychopaths – a rate that is four times higher than the general population? With the help of my TechnologyAdvice research team, I was able to use a variety of studies from the past few years to piece together the true makeup of today’s entrepreneurs.

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The post Infographic: What Makes an Entrepreneur appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Eating breakfast. Working out. Taking a shower. Driving. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, my mind is always spinning with ideas. Seriously. Even when I’m sleeping. I don’t wake up because of dreams. I wake up because of ideas – usually ideas related to my businesses.

So when it came to building my company, my goal was to surround myself with minds that worked the same way. I wanted a culture that encouraged new ideas and worked to bring them to life. You want to start giving online dance lessons? Great! Let’s purchase a domain name and build a site. You’re a talented artist who wants to open your own studio? That’s brilliant! Set your stuff up in our break room and we’ll start marketing it. (Both of these were real business ventures in our office in 2013).

If you had an idea we thought we could make profitable, we started working on it same day.

Unfortunately, this approach tends to get in the way of previously scheduled tasks, not to mention the other businesses we were trying to run. I sat down one day and realized we had 10 , yes, 10 , completely separate businesses operating from our main office space.

Apparently Business Attention Deficit Disorder (or B.A.D.D. for short) is a real condition, and it was crippling our growth.

You can’t be great at anything when you’re trying to be everything to everyone. We were a jack of many trades, which made us a master of none. It was time to grow up and focus our ideas and energy if we were going to build a sustainable and valuable business.

Identify Priorities

We started by trimming the clutter. Holiday toy sales, credit card processing, marketing data sales — they all had to go. We shut down eight of the ten businesses operating in our office, and focused all our resources on the two that held the greatest growth potential moving forward — our core marketing services (then Thrive Marketing Group) and video production (Thrive Creations). In doing so, we further specialized our marketing and research services around technology, which is where we’d realized the most success and growth. Ten months later, we re-branded Thrive Marketing Group as TechnologyAdvice.

Open Communication

Shutting down new ideas and open discussions is the worst thing that can happen to a creative environment, so we had to be cautious and clear when communicating our new vision. We still wanted to hear great ideas and encouraged our employees to operate with an entrepreneurial mindset. We just needed these thoughts focused in certain areas. We established weekly full-team meetings to be transparent in where we stood as a company, and we added regular individual progress meetings to give every employee a chance to have an open dialogue about their concerns or ideas. This helps us communicate better, and ensure the entire team is engaged and on the same page.

Establish Structure

This was the big “growing up” part of the equation. A company of five to ten people operates much differently , and with far more freedom, than a company of 40-60 people. Rapid growth forced us to address a variety of new day-to-day concerns through the creation of office protocol and employee policies aimed at protecting both the individual and the company. Our lawyer definitely had a good laugh (and a minor heart attack) while reading our first employee handbook.

This process wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t quick. We made a ton of mistakes (especially in hiring), but we learned important lessons that helped us protect our creative culture as we continued to add new people and new objectives.

Growing up as a company also required our core team to grow as leaders and managers , including me. My start-up instincts are always to act first and think later on big ideas, but I wouldn’t have much success leading this company if there wasn’t a structure in how I communicate and execute those ideas. I forced myself to delegate more, and trust in my team to get the job done. I made sure our leadership team was included in conversations about new plans and ideas. Soon, the structure and protocols we put in place felt like they’d been there all along.

That’s not to say new challenges don’t present themselves every day. Do you know any adults who have fewer reasons to stress now that they’re all grown up? I sure don’t.

Even though we’re no longer in our early stages as a company, I’m proud to say we’re having just as much fun as “adults,” and I truly believe our best days are ahead of us.

Have you had to go through a similar growth process as a business or an entrepreneur? I’d love to hear your experiences, or your feedback on ours, in the comments below.

Sorry to run, but I suddenly have a few new ideas I have to jot down!

photo credit: Nick Harris1 via photopin cc

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The post How Our Business Focused on Less, and Did More appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

It’s what always followed when Mom and Dad used your full name in a stern voice. It’s how shock jock radio hosts and TV’s most polarizing pundits have “cut through noise” to ruffle feathers and boost ratings for years.

And it’s how you need to communicate with your team.

Evaluating job performance and providing feedback are two of a manager’s most difficult tasks, which, of course, is why they’re also among the most important. Giving praise can be fun and easy (who doesn’t like a high-five and a “gold-star?”), but when it comes to giving criticism, many leaders would rather chew on glass.

There’s a belief that offering criticism and addressing issues will be poorly received by employees, potentially making a bad situation even worse. In reality though, 57 percent of those polled in a recent study by the Harvard Business Review said they prefer corrective feedback over praise and recognition.

I think five out of five dentists would also recommend you do that over chewing glass (or maybe four out of five — there’s always one in those studies that refuses mainstream thinking).

It’s also becoming increasingly important for managers to have these conversations, positive or negative, considering Gallup’s latest poll on the “State of the American Workplace” shows that 52 percent of employees consider themselves “disengaged” from their workplaces. Another 18 percent consider themselves to be “actively disengaged.” Gallup estimates that this costs the U.S. between $450-550 billion in lost productivity each year. (Tweet This)

How about that for some straight talk?

People want to know how they can achieve more and advance their careers. And they want to hear it from their leaders.

I make it my goal to be up-front and honest with all of our employees and encourage our other managers to do the same. If you’ve struggled with these situations in the past, here are five ways to help make them more productive than eating glass:

5 Ways To Have More Productive Employees

1. Don’t waste their time

When an employee is underperforming, they usually know it. Trying to act like you’re unaware of their struggles or attempting to lighten the significance of their shortcomings only wastes time and productivity. We’re all adults with a job to do. Leave the sugar-coating for their birthday treat of choice (which you should be providing) and start talking about how we can do things better.

2. Make your reasons clear

While many employees may want to hear constructive criticism, that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Be respectful and be sure to explain that the purpose of your feedback is to not just to boost team performance, but also help them develop individually and achieve their personal career goals.

3. Don’t ask them to solve problems themselves

Starting the conversation with questions like “How do you think you’ve been doing lately?” or “Why do you keep making these mistakes?” puts too much of the focus and pressure on the employee. If they could solve their problems themselves, there would be no need for this conversation. Managers should identify the areas that need to be improved, then work with employees to find solutions and execute them.

4. Set relationship boundaries

Giving criticism is hard enough, but it’s made more difficult by personal relationships. The line between being a friend and being a boss is a tough one for many managers to walk, but boundaries have to be set for both parties – and the company – to be successful. Strong friendships can force hesitation in addressing troubling trends, which can establish a troubling trend of its own. Be human and be a boss who cares about the people you hire, but also establish the limits of those personal relationships.

5. Reinforce your belief in them

It’s the old “compliment sandwich.” Or at least the open-face version of it. After addressing the issues and working to find a solution, be sure to remind employees that your involvement doesn’t end there. Let them know you’re going to be in their corner, and you’re still confident in their abilities.

Have some tips or some “real talk” of your own? We’d love to hear them in the comments section below (though keep that criticism constructive, wink wink).

If you’ve been avoiding a conversation on a tough topic, now’s the time to have it. Don’t wait until it’s too late to solve a problem or get a valued employee back on track. It won’t be fun and it probably won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

That’s straight talk. No filter.

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That’s always been my entrepreneurial motto. Time wasted becomes opportunity wasted, so just dive in and experience everything you can.

This approach has produced great success in both my life and business, but not without a few challenges along the way. These challenges make up my “database of mistakes,” a mental database that (hopefully) keeps me from repeating such missteps as I move forward.

While flipping through these setbacks, it’s clear that many of them come from the same area: hiring.

At TechnologyAdvice, we’ve learned the hard way that “growing pains” are more than an overused cliche and an under-appreciated Alan Thicke sitcom from the ’80s. They are a harsh reality for small businesses trying to expand in both revenue and manpower. This is especially true when your company values action first and discussion later.

We needed a bigger staff, so we moved fast and assumed we’d figure it out as we went. Turns out, we needed to invest more time and more thought into identifying the employees that were the best fit for our team and our culture.

And we are not alone.

A recent CareerBuilder study revealed seven in ten businesses were affected by a bad hire in 2012. 41-percent of those businesses estimated the cost of that mistake to be at least $25,000. So much for those IT upgrades you had planned for the office.

That number fluctuates depending on the size of the business, but you can use this formula from The Undercover Recruiter to determine what it would be for your company. That same report also reminds us that 75-percent of demand for new employees is to replace workers who left the company.

We’ve lost more than our fair share of time, money, and productivity in the black hole of bad hiring over the past few years, so hopefully some of the lessons we’ve learned will help you avoid these same mistakes.

Here’s a few “highlights” from our hiring adventures:

We hired talkers, not walkers

Have candidates ever seemed too good to be true? Sometimes they are. We no longer go with our gut after being blown away in an interview. We focus on past work patterns, and let tangible examples speak for themselves.

This lesson came from a recent hire who sold us on being able to adjust to our pace, mission, and culture. This person had great work experience, great references, and skills that fit the position. However, it was all in a different career field, and different office environment. We made the hire anyway, convinced by the person’s seeming passion. Less than a week later, the person quit — citing differences with our focus, schedule, and culture. Lesson learned. Now we make sure they’ve “walked the walk.”

We hired people more interested in making friends than working hard

We work hard. We grind. We set big goals. But we also like to celebrate accomplishments and have fun. It’s a balance. We play ping-pong and drink beer while sharing laughs and high fives. We like fun people – you might say they’re our weak spot. But they have to be productive. Our expectations of each position are now clearly set in the interview process to eliminate any blurred lines between “work hard” and “play hard.”

We hired employees who didn’t know their job requirements

Okay, maybe we were part of the problem. We weren’t always clear up front, and a lot of roles evolved as we grew. But we also need people who are motivated enough to investigate what they’re getting themselves into when they accept a job. To do our part, we now test drive the position for a potential hire. We invite them in for a half day to experience the work they’ll actually be doing before accepting our offer.

We hired for inconsistent reasons and gave inconsistent expectations

This one was definitely on us. We didn’t do a great job of establishing goals and expectations for some positions. For others, we weren’t clear enough in how the position affected others and fit into the company’s mission.

Now we make sure to do three things:

1. Share more about our history in hopes of being transparent and fostering commitment.

2. Explain how we developed the current need for the position and how it fits into our company’s vision.

3. Make a clear list of goals for the first month, quarter, and year for each position, then have regular check-ups to help everyone meet these goals.

We hired team members who suffered from “millennialitis”

It’s a real condition. Look it up. (Okay, actually don’t). But it is a concern. We have a very young staff — about 90% millennials — in a city that Forbes ranks among the top ten destinations for millennials in the US. That means we’re always looking for young people with great potential. However, we had to learn to better identify that potential. Do they still share a checking account with their parents? Did they work through school, or at least actively participate in clubs or groups? Can they provide evidence of dedication to self-improvement and growth? If most of the answers are “no” (besides the bank account), then it’s likely a real-world job will be a tough adjustment.

I know. A lot of this is common sense, but it’s amazing how blinding it can be when you’re going full speed.

More action. Less thinking. — except in hiring. If you’ve also learned this lesson from a bad experience, we’d love to hear your story in the comments below.

Investing more time and more thought helped us double our staff to 35 over the past 14 months, and we’re hoping to add several more teammates before the end of the year. Check out our open positions and let us know if you think you’d be a good fit for our team.

With these nuggets of hiring knowledge now filed away in our database of mistakes, our focus is forward — meaning growing pains are again a thing of the past.

Apologies to Alan Thicke.

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Photo Credit: RobertCross1 (off and on) via Compfight cc

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