Bridging the Gap

Beyond Coffee Runs: Reimagining the Modern Internship

When I decided to bring an intern into our technology and creative design consultancy last quarter, I was determined to avoid the clichéd internship experience. You know the one—fetching coffee, making copies, and being relegated to busy work that provides little value to either party.

Instead, I structured Ella’s experience around what I consider the three vital environments of modern work: the client’s experience for direct stakeholder engagement, our company headquarters for collaborative learning, and remote work for developing self-discipline and focus.

This approach wasn’t without its challenges. The confidential nature of our projects (many under NDAs) initially gave me pause as I didn’t want to relegate Ella to a mundane workplace experience. The complexity of the projects that we often deliver also made me question the ability for an intern to provide meaningful contributions and conversely what can be learnt from the organisation in a relatively short space of time.

Plus, I strongly believe interns deserve compensation—the era of unpaid “experience” should be behind us; something I believe we haven’t gotten right yet. Paying our interns should be simple and legislated accordingly for business owners not to get caught up in the administration of it all. I had to wrestle with this and I understand why many small businesses shy away from the undertaking.

But these concerns paled in comparison to the potential benefits of providing a genuinely educational and enriching experience (both ways I might add).

The Reality Check Generation

What struck me most about working with Ella was something I’ve observed across her generation: an impressive confidence bolstered by their digital nativity. They’ve grown up online, navigating complex digital landscapes with ease. Yet this same confidence can sometimes create a blindspot when it comes to receiving critique or understanding the methodical, sometimes mundane steps required to reach ambitious goals. 

One of the most valuable skills Ella developed during her time with us beyond being simply assigned tasks was to seek out what I call “defining done”— the ability to clarify and agree expectations and deliverables rather than assuming parameters. Ella herself commented that knowing when to consider a piece of work finalised was tricky. This speaks to something I’ve held closely throughout my career, which is the notion of Getting S*** Done. This statement bookends nicely to defining done – there is a real art to defining completeness, too much deliberation and investigation leads to “analysis paralysis” and introduces bloat to projects, too little and assumptions and misalignment creep into a project and blow out costs and timelines with re-work and re-calibration. Failure is an excellent teacher but we have to nurture and support what comes next; the courage to ask questions in spite of this and the willingness to persist. Having the support of your manager/organisation rather than punitive measures is critical and it builds trust and confidence across the board. Once you have this, you can really GSD.

“Equally important was learning to “manage up,” recognising that her supervisors (both myself and at the client) were often time-poor and that successful delegation requires proactive clarification.

Oftentimes I find myself context switching between multiple projects and priorities—a reality for most people in supervisory roles. Decision-making in these environments hinges on two critical components: available information and background knowledge. The time-poor component creates a situation where supervisors rely on team members to perform requisite research, fact-finding, and validation to supply that “available information.”

What impressed me about Ella was that she arrived with a solid framework for analytical thinking from her Creative Intelligence program. However, adapting this academic approach to the workplace required refinement. Where university assignments offer structured rubrics and clear parameters, professional tasks often come with implicit expectations and unspoken requirements.

I observed her growth when she began anticipating informational gaps in client deliverables before I needed to point them out. Rather than simply completing the assigned analysis, she started contextualising her findings within the client’s specific business challenges—something her academic training had prepared her for conceptually, but that required practical calibration in a fast-paced professional environment. This refinement process—taking strong academic foundations and recalibrating them to serve time-constrained decision-makers—represents a crucial transition that even the most well-educated graduates must navigate.

 Learning how to clarify expectations at the time of being given a task was a skill that Ella developed over the course of her time with us. This goes hand in hand with my earlier point of work definitions and GSD – having elevating levels of empathy enable others to do the same within an organisational structure and breeds a culture of common support and camaraderie.

Our client noticed this shift too. They commented that Ella showed stronger interest in strategic tasks than routine ones—a common trait I’ve observed in ambitious young talents who sometimes overlook the foundational building blocks in favor of the big vision and attributing themselves to it. Through mentorship, we worked to balance these tendencies and build competency and understanding of the importance of operational routine as the building blocks to meaningful contribution, personal growth and purpose.

The Apprenticeship Model Still Matters

In an era increasingly dominated by AI and automation, the soft skills that define successful careers can’t be downloaded or programmed—they must be observed, practiced, and refined through real-world experience. As a technologist and probably the industry most at-risk of disruption I’ve come to appreciate that AI is a very well-informed companion and co-pilot in a very different future to the one I’ve made a career out of and hopefully can pass along to the next generation.

When Ella found herself facing the occasional situation where responsibilities became blurry (a common challenge in multi-vendor environments), she had to navigate complex stakeholder dynamics that no classroom could adequately simulate or AI create a facsimile of to respond to. These moments, though occasionally uncomfortable, provided invaluable learning opportunities that will serve her throughout her career.

What surprised me most was her feedback. Ella mentioned she expected to be “ferrying assistant mundane tasks in an office setting” and instead found herself applying her academic knowledge in meaningful ways while gaining direct client exposure. She discovered that the principles taught in her creative intelligence program actually translate to the workplace—when given the opportunity to apply them. It’s really awesome to bear witness to other people’s “A-Ha” lightning strike moments.

Why Every Business Should Consider Mentoring Interns

If there’s one thing I’d urge my fellow business leaders to consider, it’s this: internships benefit both parties in ways that extend far beyond temporary help or resume building.

Technology remains just as misunderstood today as when I entered the field decades ago. We desperately need practitioners who can not only master technical concepts but effectively communicate them to build understanding and confidence among stakeholders. A worrying reliance on technology is emerging and the silver bullet of Artificial Intelligence can and has compounded this even further.

Through mentoring, I found myself reflecting on my own skills and approaches. Your body of work has a way of dictating the tide and this can mean that some areas simply get overlooked or neglected. There’s nothing quite like fresh perspectives to make you reassess and refocus your own assumptions and practices – for that I’m continually grateful for having this experience once again.

In my time I’ve witnessed workplace cultures transform from autocratic management to collaborative environments, but this shift brings its own challenges. Autonomy requires responsibility, and that responsibility needs conscious development. Internships provide the perfect testing ground for this growth. Many of us have worked in collaborative environments for years now, but it’s only through the bumps, bruises and growing pains that we’ve evolved. We should be well placed to highlight the way for future generations.

Looking Forward, Not Back

The reality is that in our rapidly evolving digital landscape, we need creative, confident thinkers who can navigate complexity while maintaining the discipline to execute methodically. These skills aren’t developed overnight or in isolation—they’re cultivated through meaningful professional relationships and real-world challenges.

At Neon Light, we’re building a roadmap to making meaningful mentorship a cornerstone of both our business philosophy and our approach to technology consultation. This commitment reflects my own professional journey—having navigated the evolution from technical practitioner to strategic advisor over two decades. The same principles that guide our client relationships—demystifying complex technology concepts, building bridges between technical capabilities and business outcomes, and fostering genuine human connections in an increasingly digital world—inform our approach to developing talent. By investing in the next generation of technology thinkers, we’re not just fulfilling a corporate responsibility; we’re cultivating the kind of multidimensional problem-solvers who will advance our industry in ways we can’t yet imagine.

So, to those reading this, I encourage you to consider how you might incorporate internship opportunities into your organisations. Not as a source of cheap labor or a corporate social responsibility checkbox, but as a genuine investment in our collective future and an opportunity for mutual growth. As I’ve stayed in touch with previous interns and watched their careers flourish, I’ve realised that perhaps the most rewarding aspect of mentorship isn’t what we teach them, but what they go on to achieve. 

After all, in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, the uniquely human skills of creative problem-solving, effective communication, and collaborative innovation have never been more valuable. And those are precisely the skills we have the privilege to help develop when we mentor the next generation.