CLINTON — “We’ve sponsored college internships at Indium [Corp.] for years,” declares Rick Short, the company’s director of marketing communications, “but it was never formalized. The original idea was that providing summer jobs for college students was a nice thing to do. What started out as altruism changed when the supervisors discovered that the interns were talented, skillful, and capable of being productive. So, stage two involved getting as much value from the interns as possible. That worked very well, too. In stage three, we woke up to the connection between the internship experience and the potential for full-time hiring. That’s when I started calling these internships a slow-motion job interview.”                 

Last year, Indium decided to formalize the program companywide as a component of its plan to build a world-class workforce. “Indium is a global company, and we need to attract the best talent to compete,” Short stipulates. “There is a lot of competition for the talent pool, and our internship program helps to attract high-performance people who are really smart. The program is driven by our department supervisors who submit requests for the interns, accompanied by an explanation of why they are needed and a description of the projects they will work on. A committee reviews the requests and determines which ones will be granted.

“It’s amazing how popular the internship program has become,” says Short, “because the supervisors are competing [aggressively] for the interns. This year, the committee approved 10 paid-internship positions and then widely promoted the openings. The program runs from June 1 through Aug. 10. The effort netted 300 applications.” 

Indium offers internships in purchasing, R&D, process development, accounting and finance, administrative support, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, quality control, human resources, information systems, marketing, marketing communications, operations, nanotechnology, and tool and die making. Jim McCoy, the company’s talent-acquisition coordinator, oversees the program.

The idea of internships sprang up in the 11th and 12th centuries from the professional apprenticeships required by European trade guilds. Apprentices typically served a master craftsman for most of their teen years, eventually graduating to journeyman status and acceptance as a guild member. In the age of industrialization, the guild system was replaced by union apprenticeships. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that formal internships started to appear in the business world. In the 1980s, business schools began to establish internship programs and made them more appealing by granting course credits.

Interns
“This has been a wonderful experience,” avers Lucia Forte, at the beginning of her 9th week of a 10-week program as a marketing communications intern at Indium. In September, Forte will start her senior year at the Rochester Institute of Technology as a new-media-marketing major in the business school. “I worked at headquarters on a number of projects, ranging from making the company’s website more e-commerce friendly, such as optimizing the shopping-cart experience. I also worked on securing the website-purchasing transactions. Other projects included my work in communications, including blogging, overseeing the internship blog page, coaching interns on their blogging efforts, creating the 2016 internship page, and internal corporate announcements. In some sense, I was the ‘window’ for all of the interns who were scattered at multiple locations, and I also was the contact with outside vendors such as the Paige Group and Quadsimia. My experience here has reinforced my confidence that I am good at communications, and this is a career I want to pursue.”

“I appreciated working closely with my supervisor, Anita Brown, who made sure that the work was meaningful, let me figure out how to complete the assignment, and was always responsive when I needed help,” continues Forte … “Another thing that impressed me was the company’s efforts to help the interns grow as individuals, spending time on things not directly beneficial to Indium. For example, every Wednesday all of the interns had Lunch-and-Learn together and listened to a variety of presenters. The topics at lunch included presentations on mentorship, interpersonal competence, intellectual property, personal branding and social media, networking and communications, and résumés.”

Matthew Haddad, a desktop-administrator intern at Indium, says, “This is my third college internship and by far the best.” Haddad is a Utica College undergraduate majoring in cybersecurity and information assurance with a concentration in cybercrime investigation and forensics. “Previously, I interned at Excellus BCBS as a data analysis and recovery intern, reviewing claims overpayments. My other internship was at Community Bank in Cicero, investigating fraudulent activity. Indium was my first choice for internships this summer, because I wanted to work in IT. I got to work with state-of-the-art software that automates multiple OS patching, scans for vulnerabilities, audits both hardware and software, and runs compliance reports. From day one, I hit the ground running, eventually working on four different projects ranging from the help desk to software deployment and records retention. I found that I enjoyed the help desk, interfacing on the phone with Indium staff. Everyone starts out frustrated with his or her own problem, but I let that roll off my back. There was a lot of satisfaction helping people, and I found that I was good at it. The program was well-organized, and the work was meaningful. Everyone treated the interns as fellow employees, as part of the team. This summer strengthened my abilities in project planning, communications, organizing, and networking.”

Mentors
Jeffrey Rivet, the network administrator at Indium, mentored Haddad’s internship. “On day one, I on-boarded Matt as though he were a regular employee,” explains Rivet. “That means treating him as if he will be here forever. My goal was to get him up to speed as soon as possible and leverage his knowledge learned at school. That’s why I spent as much time mentoring him as a new, [full-time] employee. What I really loved were his fresh ideas, his new point-of-view. Matt always asked why we were doing something a certain way, and it made me re-evaluate our … [processes]. After every event, we did a ‘like-best-next-time’ to review our new training, skills, and ideas to make the next time better.”

Anita Brown, senior marketing/communications manager at Indium and Forte’s mentor, echoes Rivet’s positive assessment of the program. “The company tailors an internship to the new intern,” she observes. “Lucia came with a new perspective and an understanding of new technologies on how to do things. We would discuss a project and what we wanted to achieve. Then she worked independently and came to me only when she needed help … I love to mentor new interns and watch the bonding process, as the interns work with each other and with the staff.”

Benefits of internships
Short summarizes the benefits of the college-internship program to Indium. “This program is important to help fill the pipeline with future employees,” he says. “Of the 12 interns who joined us last year, the first year of the new program, Indium hired three after the program concluded. We also know that college campuses are viral environments so word about the program spreads quickly and helps to draw more applicants. In addition, the program gives the company an opportunity to test-drive the interns, the most effective way to evaluate not just their talent but also how well they adapt to the corporate culture. Interns increase the company’s productivity by utilizing short-term support to keep our full-time employees from being overburdened [by side projects]. 

“We also know from national statistics that interns who have completed a program tend to stay with the company longer than those who did not participate in an internship, and, in addition, they tend to be highly motivated. And finally, creating this program is a way for Indium to give back to the community that has supported us by helping students gain experience, make connections, strengthen their résumés, learn about a field, and assess their personal interests and abilities,” Short continues.

Haddad, in a blog he wrote for the company on July 22, listed the benefits of the internship to the interns. “The first benefit … is that an internship provides the opportunity to learn more and get more experience in a field,” he wrote … “Secondly, an internship gives the opportunity to decide if a person has chosen the correct career path … The third benefit would be that you can help benefit the company or organization you are interning for … The fourth benefit … is the networking … Working in an actual professional setting can give a student a huge advantage … Networking and building connections can put you ahead of the game … Finally, the fifth … benefit is that an internship can lead to a job.”

National stats
A study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, from data collected between Nov. 9, 2015, and Feb. 17, 2016, and released in May 2016, highlighted national trends in corporate internships. First, employers typically begin recruiting interns eight months before their start date. Second, interns are most widely sourced from open applications. Third, the most widely used criteria for employers deciding from which college to select interns include the majors offered, the company’s recruiting experience, the quality of the school’s program, and the school’s geographic location. Preference for selecting candidates includes the applicant’s field of study, a high GPA, and leadership experience. Historically, full-time, entry-level hires converted from an employer’s own internship program are more likely to remain with the employing organization than their counterparts who have no experience with a program or gained their experience with another company. The average hourly wage paid to interns at the undergraduate level is $17.69. 

Indium is a materials supplier to the global electronics assembly, semiconductor fabrication and packaging, solar-voltaic, and thermal-management markets. Founded in 1934, the company employs 800 — 450 of whom work in the Mohawk Valley. In the past two years, Indium has added 100 employees. In addition to corporate headquarters in Clinton, the company also has domestic locations in Utica and Chicago. Overseas, Indium has plants in China, Singapore, Korea, the UK, and Italy, for a total of 11 manufacturing sites worldwide occupying 385,000 square feet of space. The Business Journal estimates the company, which holds more than 50 patents, generates annual sales of more than $200 million.

Engineering is for young people?
One thing not discussed during the interviews conducted by this reporter is the idea that an engineering career is a young person’s game. To be an engineer today is to accept the danger of becoming technologically obsolete. The term “half-life of knowledge” was coined in 1962 to describe the time it takes for half the knowledge in a particular field to be superseded. In the 1920s, the figure for an engineer was 35 years; by the 1960s, it had dropped to a decade. Recent estimates put the figure at between 2 1/2 and 5 years. Even if the engineer invests 10 hours a week studying to stay current, his /her half -life can only be extended to between 10 and 12 years. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, expressed his concern, shared by many CEOs of technology companies, succinctly. “I want to stress the importance of being young and intellectual. Young people are just smarter [and also] … just have simpler lives … Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what’s important.” Facebook has a median employee age under 30. IBM Global Services, by contrast, has a median employee age of 38.

Short, a 32-year veteran at Indium, is enthusiastic about the firm’s college-internship program. His goal is not only to promote the program at his company, but also to encourage other corporate CEOs in the region to implement internships. “Why can’t we make the Mohawk Valley the ‘Intern Valley of America,’” he asks?

College Interns at Indium in 2016

• John Russo, technical support intern (SUNY Polytechnic Institute)
• Jamie Schwab, R&D intern (Clarkson University)
• Lindsay Cannistra, engineered solders intern (Clarkson University)
• Kimberly Flanagan, quality engineering intern (Le Moyne College)
• Tom Donovan, production liaison intern (Clarkson University)
• Matthew Haddad, information technology intern (Utica College)
• John Tomaszewski, packaging engineering intern (Clarkson University)
• Lucia Forte, marketing communications intern (RIT)
• Sean McKenna, preventive maintenance intern (MVCC)
• David Fresne, production engineering intern (SUNY Polytechnic Institute)

To read more about the Indium interns’ summer college internship experience, visit their blog at www.indium.com/interns.

Contact Poltenson at npoltenson@cnybj.com