Getting the Most Out of Interns

Offer to participate in career fairs and brown-bag lunches and build ties with professors, especially those in the business department, by offering to serve as a guest lecturer, suggests Larina Kase, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and a small-business coach based in Philadelphia.

Many colleges have internship training programs, which require applications and thereby weed out the less than motivated. Some programs even provide students with training in skills such as accounting, office management, and graphic design.

That's what Catalano found when he got in touch with the career center at nearby Fresno City College. He's hired four interns from the program so far -- each for an eight-week stint -- and he plans to bring on a fifth. His first intern, a 21-year-old participant in the college's office manager program, served as Catalano's office manager, creating the company's filing system and a mass e-mail system.

His second intern, a 19-year-old bookkeeping major, helped set up a billing system. The third intern is handling marketing and website design and a fourth will start soon. "They've all been wonderful," Catalano says. "I am really lucky."

In fact, it was more than dumb luck that made internships work for Catalano. Before he hired anyone, he did his homework and made sure that he understood the way the college both screens and trains potential interns before sending them out into the real world. He also conducted rigorous interviews, speaking to seven candidates before settling on his first intern.