A Savvy Start:

I did find an intern for myself. This was sort of a miracle. Because I was sending interns to all of the companies on my site, I didn’t want to take any of them for me. I found a great girl who seems very excited about the opportunity. I decided to put together a blog on the dos and don’ts of having an intern at your company.

1. The Interview with The Intern
I always like to say “Tell me about yourself”: This gets the intern speaking to you. For me, one of the most crucial qualities about an intern is that he or she is able to communicate. Anyone working for you needs to properly represent you. I am extremely talkative and like to think I’m personable. I need to be 100 percent sure that the intern will be just as personable on the telephone– especially when speaking to press or people he or she is unfamiliar with.

The ability to speak clearly and slowly is also important, especially when pitching and making cold calls. Also, telling someone to “tell me about yourself” usually gives me a quick understanding of his or her background, education and prior experience.

Always ask what the student’s ultimate career goal is. You don’t really want someone working for you if you can’t give him or her anything back. If they have no long-term interest in the work you are doing, I wouldn’t hire them. I don’t believe they would put as much into the internship as a student who might be interested in the field.

Clearly explain the day-to-day tasks to the student. If the intern will be making lots of coffee and hanging out by the copier all day, make that clear. Treat him or her as a client and properly manage expectations. This will keep the intern from complaining down the line. I was clear with my intern that she will be rolling some calls with me, doing heavy research, putting together many Excel documents with contacts, etc.

Make sure to communicate about scheduling/hours. With fall interns, employers should be prepared to be flexible. Students are working around their school/class schedules, which can sometimes mean a few hours on multiple days or long hours with few days in the office. Whatever they are going to be, make sure to be on the same page about this in order to manage your own expectations. You don’t want to be frustrated with someone because you weren’t on the same page about the time commitment.

Tell the intern NOT to come in during his or her first week of classes. Let the intern get himself or herself in order: School does need to be the first priority. Start the internship the second week of classes: This way the student can clearly plan the schedule.

If you do like the intern over the phone, don’t offer the job to him or her right away. Let him or her wait for a day. Play hard to get–you don’t want the position to seem too easy to obtain. If you do like him or her, I’d call the following day and offer the position. I always tell the student to sleep on it for one night and, if he or she is interested, to call me the next day. You don’t want to put him or her on the spot or have the intern commit to something under pressure and then flake out.

Labor Day is quickly approaching, and–like every Thursday before a holiday–no one is around. People are extremely hard to reach, and my inbox is cluttered with auto responses from everyone and his or her mother saying, “I will be out of the office from blah, blah, blah.” Hasn’t anyone else heard of a BlackBerry? Being available at all times?

I guess not everyone is a workaholic like me, and probably like most of my readers. People get flaky pre-vacation, and it makes work so worthless. Maybe that should have been my blog title, “Work Is Worthless.”

It is 10:46 p.m., and I’m at my favorite coffee shop in the Valley. I’ve been sitting here for the past three hours trying to go through old e-mails and consolidate my contacts into one, solid list. I figure this will be handy for sending group e-mails/newsletters/etc. I’m also categorizing the contacts in one column of the Excel doc into categories such as entertainment, publicity, etc. This will help me sort through the contacts when I need to send specific e-mails.

Today was an all right day in the office. I moved from a cubicle into an office, and that is always exciting. I even put some pics/press up, just to mark my territory! I continued to get a steady flow of resumes in today from potential interns. Other than that, I spent most of my day sitting in traffic on my commute from my new palace/one-bedroom apartment. Oh, check out internweb.com–it’s featuring my program. I’ll have to persuade them to put me above the fold–but hey, we love Internship Partner Friends!

I hope everyone is making his or her goals for September. September 1 is right around the corner. Oh, and I’d like to wish a very unprofessional happy birthday to one of my best friends, Lauren Gold, who is celebrating at midnight! I’d love to say that I’m signing off for the weekend, but I’m sure I’ll be here, blogging away.

Yes, I’ve been trying to prove to different people over the past few years that internships are important and that students do need help getting them. Today, I finally got a nice amount of resumes in my inbox. The only problem? Well, I spent about four hours sorting resumes and adding internships. Today I added Benderspink, Marie Claire, Out Traveler magazine, Nu Image/Millenium Films, Polaris Entertainment and CollegeHumor.com to my list of internships. I wish I were still in school. An internship at any of these places would be amazing.

How did the Intern Queen spend her day?

I know you are all dying to find out. Well, I was up late working last night and then saw The Big Lebowski for the first time, so that kept me up a bit. I woke up early to do a conference call with a potential partner website that went very well. It’s great that I can provide content for a lot of these sites that don’t have much internship advice to offer their users. I like that I can link up and work together with other internship companies. After all, the goal is to create a “One-Stop Intern Shop” so that students can go one place for all of their internship needs.

Anyhow, so I did my calls–went back to sleep–and then got up again for another call later this morning with a press outlet. It was a nice-sized press outlet, so I hope I’ll have a link to send all of you soon. I usually go into the office for the second part of the day–I miss rush hour that way, and I like to work later in the evening. And I really just spent my mid-day combing through resumes. I had a few interesting phone calls about potential partnerships, etc., but that’s really it. I worked on my other blog, I AM INTERN (you can access that from quarterlife.com/intern), and now I’m dealing with my favorite readers! I’m also speaking to a potential manager–so that should be interesting. Everyone knows how picky I am when it comes to working with other people, so we shall see what happens.

I’m going to stay at the office for a little bit longer–again, I like to skip the traffic–and then head to my old apartment to finish cleaning it out. I discovered a new coffee shop across the street that has . . . wait for it . . . free wireless. Rockstar! And since my wireless won’t be installed in my new place until Friday, I’ll be hanging out there this evening, plugging away.

So last week I mentioned that a little celebrity action really helped my site get the word out to more people. I received more resumes this week than any week before because of increased awareness about the site and the program, quarterlife.com/intern. I’m continuing to work hard to build my brand, build awareness of our program, etc. Am I still struggling with time ? Yes!

Time Savers and Traffic Bumpers
I try to work with two computers–my desktop and my laptop–and try to avoid taking random notes on pieces of paper as much as possible. I’m notorious for having random papers everywhere, with e-mail addresses, notes, etc. Typing my notes directly into an Excel sheet has enabled me to save time. I’m also trying to post my listings on other job sites with a redirect link back to my site. This has helped generate more traffic as well.

I moved this weekend: Phew! Thank goodness that’s over. I can now stop focusing on moving boxes and go back to my intense WORK ALL THE TIME AND DO NOTHING ELSE philosophy. I’m kidding–sort of. I did make a timeline today of all of my goals, and that helped put things in perspective. We launched August 5. It isn’t even the end of the month, and I have more than 100 listings of great entertainment, web and magazine internships, some great press and some cool opportunities coming up.

My goals for the rest of the week are to keep updating my listings and get my random notes and papers organized. I’m also continuing to reach out to schools and see what the best way to get involved is. Oh, and calling the press is ALWAYS on my agenda. How could the media not want to write about  internships ?

Dear Diary,

I know what you must have been thinking. I start a business and then I never blog. Not to worry, I will not make a habit of that. I just got so caught up in everything else that I lost track of my blogging time. I also lost track of my precious working out time that I find so important.

Things the Intern Queen did for her website launch this week:

1. Stayed up late Sunday night making sure all of our internships were properly entered in the system. While doing this, I came across a bug. I wasn’t able to properly edit the individual internship entries. This was something that got fixed by our web team later in the week.

2. Sent out a press release on PRWeb.com focusing on the Los Angeles, New York and Chicago metro areas. Those are where most of our internships are right now. We are expanding to everywhere, but those have the most postings at the moment. The release got picked up on a few other basic newswire-type sites. Nothing great. Was PRWeb worth it ? I don’t have an answer on that yet.

Note: If you send a press release via PR Web, you need to put it on the web two days in advance. I had to pay an extra fee to get it released that day.

I’m also thinking about putting the release out on Business Wire–but so far, the response from PRWeb has not impressed me. I will make a judgment call on this next week.

3. Sent a note to friends/family. I drafted an e-mail explaining the function of my site and sent it to friends and family whose contacts were saved on my Outlook address book. The problem is:  All of the hundreds of friends I have on sites like Facebook and Myspace aren’t in my Outlook Address Book. I just spent a good amount of time sending e-mails to all of those people. It takes awhile because you have to first pull up their profile pages to get their e-mails.

4. I tried spamming some students at NYU and UCLA via Facebook–telling them to go to my site for free internships. Facebook is pretty secure and doesn’t really allow you to spam. They sent me a warning message. Ooops.

5. I studied the Google Analytics I set up on my page to see exactly where most of the visitors were coming from and tried to study trends about the visitors on my page.

6. I spent lots of time on “Google” and “Yahoo” search engines. I took note of what came up when I typed in internship-related terms such as “intern,” “internship,” “Quarterlife,” etc.

I’m still trying to get my schedule together. My daily responsibilities include: E-mailing and calling companies that I’d like to get to post on my site, sending student resumes to employers, entering the data from the internship posting forms into our system, reaching out to the press, reaching out to students, reaching out to potential sponsors, etc. When my inbox is full, it’s harder to get the data entry and the longer tasks finished. I like to do the data entry late at night when there is no e-mail overflow. When I stay up too late, I miss the New York calls that I need to make in the mornings. UGH. And when I stay at work late I miss my workouts!

I’m having a difficult time getting the word out to students that they can get FREE internships on our site. Since our launch, I’ve had a great response from companies. Time Inc, Rolling Stone, US Weekly, Sony and Weinstein Co. internships are all on the site. I have more than 100 companies looking for fall Interns–so that is great. I just have to get the students aware of my free internship services.

Currently, I just finished e-mailing more contacts from Facebook.com. I can only do so many in a day. I’m going to take a quick dinner break and then finish studying a list of the most popular sites for 18-to-25-year-olds that a colleague tracked down for me. I’m so cool on a Friday night.

It’s 5:13 p.m. on Friday. I hate Friday because I feel like a clock is ticking for me to leave the office and get on with my weekend. I’m sitting in the office semi-freaking out about all of the tasks I still have to accomplish. I have so many things to do that I’m unable to process how I’m going to do all of them.

I have about 75 internship listings that need to be entered into my data system ASAP. I have company logos to upload. I need to create an organized way to manage all of my listings. I’m in the process of creating an Excel document where I can store the important internship details and keep track of them.

I need to make sure listings aren’t entered twice. I need to be able to send mass e-mails to internship coordinators. This list is taking me forever to go through. I also need to make sure that none of the company’s listings fell through the cracks for whatever reason. So I’m double-checking all of my lists against one another and trying to make this master list on Excel. Ugh.

I’m hosting three friends at my apartment tonight because they are nice enough to come over and help me sort through my stuff for my big move in a few weeks. I have to have pizza ready for them by 8:30. Well, I know what I will be doing this weekend: entering data. Yahoo!

But get excited . . . as of Monday, you’ll have a new favorite location on the web to check out. And of course, I’ll put all the links here on my blog.

Have a great weekend. I’ll be plugging away!

Lauren

I’m finally attempting some sort of balance between work and weekend. This weekend wasn’t 110 percent work, but I’d say I accomplished 85 percent of what I aimed for.

FRIDAY
I’m not the biggest fan of Fridays as far as work is concerned. I’m still cold-calling and pitching ideas to different companies and employees, and on Fridays, everyone I speak with is “signed off” work for the weekend. I guess if Friday didn’t exist, then I wouldn’t like Thursdays. Oh, well.

I left the office earlier than usual because I got a case of the Fridays. I felt as though no one I called was listening. I figured I’d have much better luck on a Monday when people are in the “work zone” and focused. Fridays are a great time to get some socializing into your life. That’s what I did: I went out to a few bars with some friends and had a great night. I’m also in the middle of moving, so I did some location scouting. In life, so many things happen at once. My new business, my move–when it rains, it pours.

SATURDAY
Saturday is usually a complete play day for me. I wanted to change that and get some work done. I still went out to breakfast and sat by the pool with friends, but I also made time to visit The Coffee Bean and get about two hours of work in. I decided to really try and utilize my social networking tools. I started going through my contacts on LinkedIn to see whether anyone was looking for interns/internships. This also gave me an opportunity to organize my daily e-mails and file them properly. I’ve also been keeping an Excel doc of “stats,” and I’m logging how many visitors my blog and my site get each day. Saturday evening I picked up a new hobby: tennis! I played for over an hour and, by the end of my time, I was actually doing pretty well. Again, I stress exercise for entrepreneurs. There’s just too much information flowing through your brain all of the time to not exercise and get it all out.

SUNDAY
Its 10:53PM and I just got back from a few hours at the bookstore. I had what I call “massive workout” for my brain. I grabbed a few magazines off the shelf and wrote down pages and pages of notes and ideas that I had for Intern Queen.

MY MASSIVE WORKOUT SELECTIONS:

Book: Free Money and Help for Women Entrepreneurs by Matthew Lesko

This book provided me with at least 10 phone calls to make tomorrow morning. It’s a great resource, and lists pages and pages of small business resources. The listings are categorized by state, so it’s easy to find your local SBA. On my “check out” list are the following women’s organizations: NAFE, ABWA, WBOC, NFWBO. I’ll let you all know what I find out.

Magazines: Entrepreneur’s StartUps Special, Fast Company, Success, Every Day With Rachael Ray (I just love her), and Shop Smart.

MODELS FOR INTERNAL ETHIKS BY THE INTERN QUEEN !!!

 (More about the clothing line to come in future blogs)

A short work week - hooray! I had another non-productive weekend. My best friend’s from Florida were in town (it is purely company season for me) so I started Monday with lots of follow up calls and slightly antsy dancey (like that one?) feeling in my belly. It is time to GET THINGS DONE!

Follow up calls and e-mails were first. There were two large print and online media sources that I was pitching hard. The first was a print publication that had started off well. They wanted more intern content so I pitched them a list of ideas. I left word with a follow up call on Monday and today (Tuesday) I got a voicemail from the editorial contact I was dealing with. She said that she was “simply understaffed at the moment and would check in with me when she restaffed in a few months.” Boo. But I have to say - I was impressed she even called me back. I’ve found that most editors/creative execs who don’t want to deal with you simply just don’t call you back.

The other online media source I was pitching was kind enough to write back asking for more detail on my ideas. I wrote them back today (via email) and hope to hear back on that front very soon! I calendared to follow up with them a week from today (since Memorial weekend is this weekend).

If you’re wondering what’s going on with my “book deal” I’m still waiting to hear back from the company. I did follow up with them on Monday and they very nicely told me they hadn’t made any decisions yet and that they should know by the end of the week. Again, if I don’t hear Friday - I will try and follow up on Monday. -As proper follow up is VERY IMPORTANT.

I’ve taken a few days to think about the FACEBOOK DIARIES project I mentioned the past few weeks. I’m going to speak to the producers and see if I can focus it solely on my company. I’m just not comfortable speaking in front of the camera about “heartbreak” “love” and “losses”. I just don’t see my personal life necessary to be broadcast on the facebook.com - my company is NOT tied to those experiences. And although any press could be considered good press - I don’t want to give a wrong impression on screen or talk about anything too personal to a mass audience with no control over the editing process…Does anyone have any thoughts on this ??

My new web designer is great so far - although he’s on vacation - so we haven’t been able to see many updates. He’s back early next week so I’m hoping for some great press and blog updates on www.internqueen.com.

I’ve completed the character breakdowns for my video blog. Now, I must start writing the episodes…here goes nothing!

On a side note: I took a YOGA class last night and found it so relaxing and a great way to channel my stress and energy. I definitely recommend this to anyone - especially entrepreneurs who might drive themselves a little dizzy at times! I’m going to try and make it a priority to get to the gym or do some sort of physical activity a few times a week to help maintain a solid self-balance.

Not exactly dieting…

I’m not really sure what this category is for….DIET ? Why do we have to talk about such things in our blog worlds ?? Well… if we must talk about dieting….for anyone trying to be a “spokesperson” or the “face” of a brand (in this case I’m trying to be the FACE of internships) then dieting is a great idea - but am I very good at this ? NOPE. Lets all read this week’s PEOPLE magazine and read the RACHAEL RAY article and then chat about this…I think that Rachael speaks out on this subject….