As a small business owner, hiring interns will come with some important duties. But don't worry; these responsibilities are small when compared to the awesome benefits that come with hiring interns. Some of the top duties include making sure the internship is set in a learning environment, keeping in contact with the intern's university, and writing a post-internship evaluation.

When hiring interns, it is always important to visualize things through the eyes of the intern as well as from your point of view as the small business owner. Besides being able to put real world experience down on their resume, the real reason students take internships is to learn. When you hire an intern, you are responsible for maintaining a learning environment. This means you should be open to answering any questions they have and guiding them in the right direction on projects and assignments. Having a learning environment really sets the tone of the internship and makes it enjoyable for the intern to show up to work every day and help your small business succeed.

Another responsibility you take on when you hire an intern is the duty to keep in close contact with the intern's school. Many small business owners assume that after they hire an intern they are done with the school until the end, but this is not the case. From the school's point of view, they want to be sure that things are running smoothly and the intern is satisfying the objectives listed in your job description. Some schools will go as far as to make on site visits to your place of business, while others will just want to email back and forth during the internship to make sure things are going smoothly. We recommend emailing or calling your internship coordinator every now and then to discuss the internship because it helps your small business form a good relationship with the university.

In most internship programs you will also be asked to fill out a post-internship evaluation form. When you are filling out this form, you should always be honest. Many small business owners will only state the positives about the intern instead of the negatives. This approach actually hurts the intern because it doesn't give them anything to work on and improve.

As you can see, hiring interns does come with some responsibilities. It may seem easy to maintain a learning environment, keep in contact with the school, and fill out an evaluation form, but these are actually very important parts and can mean the difference between a good and bad internship program. If you have any questions or comments about your responsibilities when you hire an intern, make sure to post them as a comment and we will be happy to answer them. If we get enough feedback we will post a more in depth second part of this article, maybe legal responsibilities????