Incompetent intern

Have you ever had an intern that was really not good? We've had an intern for 3 weeks now and she doesn't seem to understand anything from what we have taught her or from what she was supposed to learn at school. What have you done in this kind of situation? She applied as an IT technician to help us system administrators. From what we saw in her resume, it looked like she understood basic networking and computer technologies. But when working with her, she doesn't know what DNS & DHCP is. And she keeps telling us that she's used to working with Windows and Linux Server. But she can't make the difference between 2003 and 2008 and she doesn't know how to look what version the server is. Sorry, I had to get it out! The boss is aware of the situation but he doesn't want to do anything since he's going on vacation next week.

It just seems that her resume is not reflecting at all her real competencies.

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Comments

kriscamaro68

When I worked at one of the major colleges here we had interns that worked for us. One would be drunk sometimes during work and didn't know the difference between cat5e and phone line. The other would ask questions about everything cause he had NO logical troubleshooting skills at all. It sucked but hey if that's the future of IT we will all be employed for a long time.

5ekurity

Is this an internship through school, or how was this person brought in? Usually there is some kind of feedback mechanism to whomever the organization worked with for situations such as this, where the intern is under-performing.

shodown

Sounds like a failure somewhere in the organization for even letting her in the 1st place. These things should have been found out if they were on a resume, its not like she's some fresh from school person. Your best bet now is to coach her through getting basic task done at her level and brining her up from there.

We had a guy that had 1 networking term on his resume, but the reality was that he was the cheapest so he was hired. He was horrible, he didn't understand basic IP addressing. None of the protocols (RIP, OSPF, EIGRP) and so on. We had to sit him down and let him know that he was way out of his leauge and he had 6 months to catch up. We offered him study material and he got his CCNA and some networking knowledge out of it. Some people can be helped and others can't, its up to you guys to reach out and find out which one she is.

JasminLandry

kriscamaro68 wrote: »

When I worked at one of the major colleges here we had interns that worked for us. One would be drunk sometimes during work and didn't know the difference between cat5e and phone line. The other would ask questions about everything cause he had NO logical troubleshooting skills at all. It sucked but hey if that's the future of IT we will all be employed for a long time.

I'm glad to know I'm not alone. You're right, but fortunately they're not all like that. I myself could still be an intern since I'm only 22 but I believe I am more mature then the students you described below so that makes a difference and I understand these technologies. I love it so I'm good at it!

But I can't say it's all her fault though I know she's doing her best I just believe IT is not for her. She comes from Europe, we live in a French city in Montreal (Go Habs Go

) and an English country and she can hardly speak and write both of these languages.

JasminLandry

5ekurity wrote: »

Is this an internship through school, or how was this person brought in? Usually there is some kind of feedback mechanism to whomever the organization worked with for situations such as this, where the intern is under-performing.

It is actually a friend of someone from the finance department. But I also believe that it is my boss' fault. He should've noticed this during the interview. He might have not asked enough technical questions.

5ekurity

That's also a possibility, if the right questions were not asked during the interview....alternatively, if this is a friend of someone in the finance department, there's also the possibility of the whole 'show up for the interview and you have the internship' politics. Either way, unfortunately, you'll just have to do the best you can to educate this person and provide feedback regarding the experience when and where applicable.

Chitownjedi

Teach them how to be a pro. That's if you don't mind of course. Usually if you have to work with someone its best to go ahead and get the elephant in the room out the way and say "I see you don't know somethings you should, so I'm going to need you to step up buddy, because I need to catch you up!" If they receptive and want to learn you get to do something nice. If being nice isn't your thing, then I guess deal with the unfortunate "It is what it is"

Sometimes people are put in to our lives to teach us something, maybe you can learn how to turn a negative situation into a positive... I know i sound like a damn cloud hugger or something, but seriously, I get put in the position you state a lot, and all I can do is try to educate the people, because they keep slipping through. And there will be a lot more!

cyberguypr

Been there. We are a small IT dept, so if some part of the machine is not well-oiled it stands out like a sore thumb. Over the last couple of years my company has hired two tier I temps that although they had great resumes, it turned out they had no clue about anything IT. In my case I was working directly with one of them. This person was good following processes like imaging computers, deploying new machines, etc. but had no clue about anything else. Couldn't think out of the box for the most simple things. Couldn't even understand the concept of Active Directory. I tried really hard to mentor but it was futile. At some point I ended up redoing must of the stuff he tackled so it was obvious I was wasting too much time and couldn't work with him. Had to put a lot of pressure on our boss to terminate his services.

In the other case there was a temp that besides being clueless was just lazy and showed no work ethics. Tasks wouldn't get done, he spent most of the day on YouTube, and even fell asleep at the desk once. Also took forever to be terminated. My whole team tried to help this guy my mentoring, answering questions, motivating to get certs, etc. Also futile.

In both cases the common denominator was the hiring manager. There was no due diligence verifying the person's credentials and work experience. There was no team interview. People like this would've never gotten through one of my interviews. The company paid the ultimate price by experiencing degraded service levels and delayed projects.

My advice is to clearly communicate when someone is not carrying their share of the load. Don't assume the manager knows what's going on. Document everything.

N2IT

How about someone who has all the certifications and "experience" but can't deliver? At least an intern has somewhat of an excuse especially with the language barrier.

Try working with an CCNA or MCSE who knows less than my A+ having tail. Talk about annoying...... I worked with a gal who has two MCSE's NT and 2000. I remember we asked her to set up a network share and she had this glazed over look. One of the techs who had no certifications said aren't you an MCSE and another tech blurted out "you know she dumped it". We all busted out loud. She even busted and said yeah I found the answers on line and I figured it would help me get off the helpdesk into a system admin role.

JoJoCal19

A solid technical interview, preferably not by the hiring manager but by the senior folks currently doing the job, would have prevented any of these cases. I too had the same issue at my previous employer, not with interns but with contractors. There was a small window of time where the team lead was someone who was handed the job as a favor, was an awful supervisor, and even had the gall to tell us IAM/access was not technical nor information security, and that anyone off the street could do it. And he proceeded to hire about 4 or 5 contractors with that viewpoint, as if to prove he was right. That ended up as a trainwreck and after a year or so NONE were still there. One or two became decent at the job but their work ethic wasn't there. Two couldn't get the hang of it and didn't last long. And one was the absolute WORST person I've ever worked with. She sounded exactly like Roz from the 1-800-ASK-GARY commercials, blasted music through her headphones so loud you could hear it across the floor, and was absolutely rude and boorish, even going so far as getting into a confrontation with co-workers, cursing and throwing a triple snap in z formation. I have no idea how she got hired or where they could even find her at to hire her.

J_86

Oh man, I feel your pain. We have had some really great inters and even asked a few on part time because they have been so great so soak up everything we teach them like a sponge. Others, yeah..I question how they even got pasted the basic first HR interview, because even their people skill suck! We have one new person here now and when I asked him to reset a users password one day he said he didn't know how

. When I interview him (I'm in a remote office) the feed back I gave to my manager is that I didn't think he would be a good fit because he was going to struggle with some of the upper level technical task. Guess what? They hired him anyway, because he was cheap and had "good people skills".

I completely agree that people coming in should also have an technical interview with senior staff in the department they are going to be working in. Most places I have worked at do this and that usually weeds out the people that don't know CAT5 from a power cord

W Stewart

Just based on the number of stories it looks like a lot of people have had bad experiences with interns. At my previous job, the manager decided to hire his friend on as a jr sys admin and the guy didn't know anything. He wasn't even really qualified to be a level 1 tech there. He eventually got demoted to level 1 tech after the manager was let go for unrelated reasons and was later on fired after he brought down a critical bright house server. That's what happens when unqualified applicants get there foot in the door through the help of a friend.

jvrlopez

Had to let an intern shadow me for a few hours not too long ago. Working on their masters for IT and wasn't aware of much.

They seemed more interested in just being there and networking (getting their name out there) than the actual in and outs of the job.

N2IT

Sounds like an account manager or client relationship manager in the making. Let me guess they brought bagels or donuts their first day?

N2IT

I honestly have seen it from the other side. The two interns I managed and trained were extremely sharp. Both are doing extremely well and really picked up on things fast. Both went the technical route even though they have business degrees. I still keep in touch with one of them, she is a good friend of mine. Barely 28 really moving on up in the world.

Most of the junk I have seen has been on the service desk.

iBrokeIT

The big question that needs to be answered is what is her attitude like?

If it’s like the two interns in cyberguypr's example - let her sink and don’t waste your time. If she has a genuine interest in IT and just hasn’t had the opportunity to be adequately exposed to those technologies in a business environment - I suggest being the mentor to her that you wish you had when you were getting your start. Show her resources to learn on her own, help her develop her troubleshooting skills (dont just give her the answer), if you dont know the answer to something show her how you would go about researching it, ect

Maybe have a meeting with her if its not too late to discuss those two options.

IS3

When i used to work at a local computer shop, my boss hired this intern. he claimed to know how to fix desktop pc,laptop, virus removal and such. then i remember my boss was testing him and opened up the laptop and he asked the intern if he can take out the cd/dvd drive. and the intern took hours to figure out where it is and he ended up asking me so i helped him. Another cool situation was when he was asked to replace the motherboard of a laptop. he basically unscrew the bottom screws and then flip it over so all the screws will fall at the same time and guess what? most of the screws fell and rolled under the bench and went missing LMAO my boss saw what he did and was fired on the spot

CodeBlox

We had that happen. The person wasn't an intern but a contractor and they were silently let go at the end of the agreed term instead of keeping them. They were replaced with someone much sharper

xnx

People like this make it harder for me to get a job lol

N2IT

A certain level of aptitude is required to do any job lol.