It’s intern season again. They are joining your company and team hoping to gain knowledge on the path to employment. You are hoping they can deliver on a valuable but not critical task.

Not every internship works out though.

Most people might tell you that the top problem with interns is not having the skills needed to do the job.

That’s not my experience.

My experience is that the top issue is interns fail at is asking for help.

You’ve probably experienced it yourself. You give them a task and then they go away for days, weeks, only to come back with nothing, or the completely wrong thing.

What’s going on here?

What I’ve found is that interns have a drive to prove they can solve the problem. They treat all tasks as a school assignment, one that they are expected to solve alone.

But we don’t work alone. We work in teams.

What I want to see an intern do is start trying to solve the problem, and get stuck. Then after trying out a few options, they should ask for help.

I want to have interns that know how to communicate with team members. I want to see them work as a team member. Not as an individual.

This is the first thing I tell all new interns.

Don’t go dark.

Spend 2 hours trying to solve the problem.

If after 2 hours you don’t have a solution, write up your current understanding and everything you have tried, then send a Slack message to the team asking for pointers.

The difference between interns who follow this advice, and the ones who don’t is visibly different.

Ones who follow the advice get their tasks done.

The ones who don’t always fail.

So take the time to coach your interns how to be a team member. Get them asking for help.

This is how to help them succeed.