Small Business Big World
Internship Programs for Small Businesses
What happens when an internship transforms from a simple summer job into a comprehensive, career-shaping experience? Join us as we welcome Don Golini, the visionary behind the Nonantum Resort's revitalized internship program in Kennebunkport. From an informal start to a structured, multifaceted initiative post-COVID, Don takes us through the program's evolution. Discover the blend of departmental rotations, workshops, volunteer opportunities, and personal portfolio development that not only attracts hospitality majors but also students interested in honing their business skills. Gain insights into the recruitment process and the significant positive impact the program has made on the resort's workforce.
We also explore the intimate and vibrant work culture at the Nonantum Resort, emphasizing the essential role of having a dedicated internship manager. Learn how cross-functional collaboration and creative problem-solving—like assigning special projects during a rainy summer—have propelled the program's success.
Small Business Big World was recently ranked #48 on FeedSpot's list of the Best Small Business Podcasts!
What happens when an internship transforms from a simple summer job into a comprehensive, career-shaping experience? Join us as we welcome Don Golini, the visionary behind the Nonantum Resort's revitalized internship program in Kennebunkport. From an informal start to a structured, multifaceted initiative post-COVID, Don takes us through the program's evolution. Discover the blend of departmental rotations, workshops, volunteer opportunities, and personal portfolio development that not only attracts hospitality majors but also students interested in honing their business skills. Gain insights into the recruitment process and the significant positive impact the program has made on the resort's workforce.
We also explore the intimate and vibrant work culture at the Nonantum Resort, emphasizing the essential role of having a dedicated internship manager. Learn how cross-functional collaboration and creative problem-solving—like assigning special projects during a rainy summer—have propelled the program's success.
Small Business Big World was recently ranked #48 on FeedSpot's list of the Best Small Business Podcasts!
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast prepared by the team at Paper Trails. Owning and running a small business is hard. Each week, we'll dive into the challenges, headaches, trends, fun and excitement of running a small business. After all, small businesses are the heartbeat of America and our team is here to keep them beating. Welcome to Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast, where we talk about all things small business. For you Today we've got Don Gallini. Don's the internship manager. Is that your official title?
Speaker 2:My official title is Director of Student Employment Programs. Oh, that sounds very fancy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does All right Well at the Noniantum Resort here in Kennebunkport, which is wonderful. So talking about just internships today, thanks so much for joining us. Of course this is really great.
Speaker 1:We're excited to, as we get into the summer season, kind of talk about this stuff which is very, very important for most of our seasonal businesses. So, before we get into it, a couple of housekeeping items Don't forget, like follow, share rate review on all the podcast platforms. We're on all the social media platforms. Take a look for us. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, or for Don or anybody, you can always email us. Podcast at papertrailscom. So, don, talk to me a little bit about the history of the internship that you've developed and how that program works and you know what the job market has kind of necessitated for this right.
Speaker 2:Well, the way the program developed is back before I joined the organization there was an internship program that was roughly the same that we've got now, without the same sort of real strong organization behind it. We did get interns in, we did have them sort of loosely go from department to department, but it wasn't a super organized kind of a program. And then when COVID hit, obviously the program shut down because we weren't open and we couldn't take on students. And then when I joined the organization as a retiree just trying to find a 24-hour a week job for the summer, he knew I had some experience with sales management and talent training and things like that. So there was a young woman who worked for us, who was in the process of developing and had an internship at York County Community College and really needed someone to kind of mentor her through that program. So Jean Ginn-Martin, who's the innkeeper, asked me if I would kind of work with Akil and sort of make sure that she did what she had to do to get her internship completed for York County Community College. So I kind of put together a program for her that involved the rotations. But then I also had some other things that were kind of unique at the time in which I had her keep a journal about her experiences. I had her take some workshops and things like that and at the end she got a good grade.
Speaker 2:So after the program was over, jean came to me in December after we closed and said did a really good job trying to get Akkeel taken care of. Would you mind taking over our internship program? Now that we're coming back from COVID Really need somebody with a strong hand to kind of organize it. So, based upon what we've done in the past, what I accomplished with Akeel, I put together a program of the combined rotations. It combined formal presentations from a Maine career catalyst, which is part of Educate Maine, to provide some workshops for students on things like LinkedIn, dei, and we combined that with the spirit of volunteerism. So there's a volunteer aspect to it. We had some social aspects to it. Maine Career Catalyst had a couple of networking events and then we culminated it in what we called a portfolio, in which we asked the students to take some passion in their life that was perhaps not related to hospitality and try to apply it to hospitality. And we discovered we got some very interesting projects out of that.
Speaker 2:That sort of is how it sort of developed into what we've got now. We're now entering into our third year of this new revised program and we're hoping to have anywhere from five to six interns this year, and we're actively hiring and making offers right now.
Speaker 1:That's great. So with that program, I think certainly everyone struggles trying to find help these days, right? So how has this helped augment your team?
Speaker 2:Well, I think what this does is a couple different things. Is that when the program was first inaugurated back at the resort, it was designed exclusively for hospitality majors, so basically students who are going to schools locally or majoring in hospitality, to give them some place to actually practice their skills. But we discovered that there's a whole world of students out there that have an interest in hospitality but may not be taking courses in hospitality. So we sort of converted things around that this is less about being an internship in hospitality but more about learning sort of the soft business skills you need to be successful through the lens of hospitality Nice.
Speaker 1:That's really nice. So how are you finding these interns? Are you going through the local community colleges, like you said, or just posting them online?
Speaker 2:I sort of recruit through a combination of different things. One is I sort of have a list of people I've met over the last few years and whenever we're ready to launch the program, everybody gets a letter from me that says hey, we're launching this year's program. Here's a description of what they're doing. We hope that you will send us some students. I also put out ads in Indeed as a way of the students to apply it and find it, and also most of the schools have their own sort of proprietary system that they can use for students to find internships, Job boards and things like that, Job boards and things like that. So those three things are sort of the extent of the evangelism.
Speaker 1:So, once you find them, are they getting paid? Are they just getting credit? How are you providing housing? What does this program kind of look like in terms of compensation for?
Speaker 2:these guys. Well, basically we treat our interns the same way we treat an employee. They get a good basic wage, they get 40 hours a week and they get the skills they need to be successful at that particular rotation.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Now we keep talking about the rotation. What does that look like? They come in. I'm assuming you get you said it's about a 10-week program. You're saying then is it a week at every department kind of thing? How do you break that up?
Speaker 2:What we do is we try to break it up, and so there's about. We have roughly five different departments and every two weeks the students rotate into a new department and what they learn are the basic skills in that department. But I think what's more important it's less about the skills in that department and more learning about the interrelationships between that department and other departments.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:You know, there's nothing that the front desk does that doesn't affect housekeeping. There's nothing that reservations does to bring in guests that doesn't affect food and beverage. So everything's always everything's interrelated and I think being able to see that relationship between the various departments really is what helps the students to understand that. You know, this is like a small city and that's exactly what we're doing, and that, I think, has made a lot of impression on them, because they're just not used to seeing that Most of their education, I think, has been smokestacked. That's probably the first time they've actually got a chance to see that everything in business is related. Nothing's in a vacuum.
Speaker 1:Which is really nice and certainly you know we see in most of our clients' businesses that especially nowadays you're seeing fewer and fewer high school students working and they may not have their first job until they're graduating college.
Speaker 1:And I I think coming into the workforce, you know, at 21, 22, is a totally different experience than starting when I did at 14, right, right, uh, and you know, because I learned back then how to work with people and how to how to serve customers and all those kind of things, uh, and I think those life skills are really important, I think like.
Speaker 2:the other thing that's important, I think, is that most of the internships that students are offered traditionally are like single departments you go to be an intern in marketing, go to be an intern in finance. What we're doing, basically, is giving them an internship in four or five different skills that they wouldn't see otherwise. I think that's what really makes our program unique.
Speaker 1:Which is really neat. So when they go, so they start their rotation their first week, are you teaching them cooking skills? Are they running the line, are they serving tables, are they making beds, all those kind of things.
Speaker 2:With the exception of actually cooking meals. They're doing just about everything you talked about. They'll go to housekeeping and they'll learn how to strip a room, how to make the beds in the room, what makes a good room? How do you know when a room is complete and clean? How do you work the supply cabinet? How do you get supplies? How do you work with the people you're working with to get that room clean?
Speaker 2:When you go to the front desk, you learn a lot about customer relations. How do you greet the guests? What are the rules that we follow? How do you make guests happy? How do you listen actively? When you go to food and beverage, learn about serving Again, how to take care of the guests, how to write down their needs, how to make sure that the guest has a wonderful experience. When you work in sales and events, you learn about how we conduct groups, what are the important things for a wedding, a business group that comes in. So you learn a lot about what our guests need and how to reflect back and make their experience the very best you possibly can, and that's what really makes a difference, I think.
Speaker 1:Which is awesome. I think that's you know. I wonder you probably know this, but when you get done with your two weeks at the front desk, right. Are you? Is it a two-week training program? Could they come back in the fall or next year and work the front desk? I mean, are you seeing a follow-through like that?
Speaker 2:What's been kind of interesting is that, well, two things happened. One, because of the fact that the internship ends in August, a lot of times the interns that are technically leaving, we can invite them back to stay. So we've had a couple of interns that have received associate, have received associate degrees from like Southern Maine Community College, and so we've actually invited them to stay on. We've had a couple of interns who worked for us from UNE liked them so much that at the end of the season we said hey, you know what? I know that your internship has ended, but we're going to be open from now till the end of December. We'd like to stay on as a server or work breakfast or things like that.
Speaker 2:Do things like that. We've also had a couple of what I call conversions. Students who were not majoring in hospitality at all, at the end of the internship, said this is something I really kind of like I may actually go ahead and do this. And actually there was one kid from last year who was majoring in, I believe, sports marketing and when he graduated he actually went to work for Marriott.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So we've had those kind of conversions, which is very gratifying.
Speaker 1:That's really nice, I know so certainly. I was in New York City a couple months ago and the hospitality staff there, that's a career right. And I think, unfortunately in Maine, sometimes people don't think about it the way they think about it. As this is my summer job and it's really great, I think that you guys are taking that and saying this can be a career, right, this can be something that you do for the rest of your life, that's fulfilling and pays you well and makes a good living and so forth right.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that I've picked up from talking to other people in the hospitality industry is that and this may get me in trouble that apparently there are a lot of parents who are not encouraging their kids to go into hospitality. They're looking at the hours, the fact that you're working weekends, the fact that there's not a lot of night work, and trying to find what they think is a better life for their children. What they don't realize is that a lot of students thrive on the aspect of being of service to others, and that really makes a difference to them.
Speaker 1:Well, it's whatever fulfills you, Right? I mean sitting at a desk for nine to five isn't for everybody right, and I think that certainly is important. There's a role for everybody, right, and certainly it sounds like you have made the conscious decision to give everyone exposure to all the different departments, right, and who knows? Maybe, housekeeping is what someone likes right, and it may not be making beds for the rest of your life, but it may be management or something like that. Manage positions within all those areas and there's, there are careers there that really will, that you can thrive.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know you have long-term staff that have been with you 35 plus years, uh, at the resort that you know. It's not a bad place to work, obviously, and the other thing too.
Speaker 2:That's really cool about a place like the nonanta because of the fact that we are fairly small we only have 109 rooms. There's a lot of cross work, in other words, and I don't like cross in terms of anger, cross in terms of things happen and we need people to do stuff, and so you may be working the front desk and someone will come along and say, hey, I just realized that we've got, we're practically turning over the whole hotel today. I need some people to come upstairs and strip beds for a couple of hours, so you just leave what you're doing and find someone to cover you. You go upstairs, you cover beds for a while. Or last year I was working on the evening of one of the prelude dinners. We were short-staffed, so they came to me and said Don, you're dressed okay today.
Speaker 1:Would you mind putting on an apron and serving potatoes for the next two hours? Sure, why not?
Speaker 2:So it's about that ability to what we call in an anthem pivot. You think you're going to go off in one direction and then something happens and you veer off in another. But it's just to satisfy.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, that's a great skill to have, right. I mean, nothing's black and white in this world, and certainly being able to pivot is important, which is great. You talked a little bit about your role in the program. Would you say the success of the program has been driven by having that organization, having that?
Speaker 2:kind of person like you that can run that.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it didn't sound like it was very organized until you came in and now the program seems to be thriving.
Speaker 2:I think you have to have someone who is dedicated to the program, be it dedicated on a part-time basis or dedicated on a full-time basis. I don't think you can just create a program, say here's a bunch of documents and leave it at that. It's not going to happen. I think you have to be able to look at what's going on, make changes in mid-course and make it work. I'll give you a good example. Last year, if you remember, was a fairly rainy summer.
Speaker 2:Very rainy summer and we noticed because of that some of the interns were getting their hours cut because there just wasn't enough. There weren't enough guests to be able to give them all 40 hour work. So I felt badly about this. So I went to Tina and Jean and I said, look, I don't think it's fair of us to hire these interns. Tell them they're gonna have what can we do to try to fulfill our promise?
Speaker 2:So what we came up with was we polled the managers and asked them to come up with projects that they had maybe been thinking about doing, didn't have the resources for, and so we assigned some of the interns some of those projects. So, for example, one of the interns who had a background in finance she worked with one of the marketing managers to help create a budget. Another intern who had majored in event planning from Southern Maine Community College we had a new catering manager and so he worked with her for a couple of days and actually did some inventorying of all the serving ware that we had. So basically we took projects that people had sort of said I'm not going to, I'm never going to get a chance to do this and get some of those projects fulfilled.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I mean that's great. It certainly sounds like you're the advocate for the program.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And that sounds like it's an important piece of building an internship Right.
Speaker 2:It's that ability to advocate and pivot.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing that's helped, too, is I've really tried to expand the students' horizon just beyond the resort itself. So, for example, I mentioned Main Career Catalyst, yep, they've been our partner for the last three years and what they do is they offer a number of different workshops for students that are taught online. So there are online seminars in how to use LinkedIn, how to find your first job, how to interact with your peers, dei training all those skills that students need to be successful that are independent of a particular business setting. They also offer a number of very unique networking events for students as well that we encourage them to go to. So like, for example, last year there was a one-day leadership camp that was sponsored by LL Bean. We encourage the students to go to that. We had a tacos and kayaks and ice cream party on the lawn at the Nonantum that was sponsored by Maine Career Catalyst. So we're trying to give the students, aside from being able to act on their own, also give them a chance to interact with others as well.
Speaker 1:Sure and have a little fun.
Speaker 2:Right, have a little fun. And then the other thing we did, which worked out much better than I thought it was going to be, is that, because of the the slowdown I talked about earlier, we established one day a week of what we call independence day. So on independence day, the students could work on their own projects and we put them in a room, one of our meeting rooms, got them all working together, they could collaborate, they could do what they wanted to do, and it also gave them a chance to uh, to meet up and get to know each other.
Speaker 1:That's really neat. That sounds really valuable for sure. I mean, I think the social piece of it is probably really important too, and you know, just like you said, learning to interact with other people, learning to meet other people.
Speaker 1:Those are skills that, unfortunately, a lot of employees don't necessarily have, especially if they haven't ever worked before. Right, so that's really great. What would you say the benefits to the resort have been overall? I mean, certainly you're setting these students up for a great future, but what is the resort gaining from this? What are you gaining from this?
Speaker 2:Well, I think we're gaining energies and insights because these are fresh faces. Some of them never really worked for a hotel before. They have a different way of looking at things. They're sometimes making suggestions on things that we're doing, that maybe we shouldn't be doing and things that we can improve.
Speaker 2:For example, one year the first year of the program we had a young woman who came to us who was actually from. She was a business major at the University of New England in business sustainability. So we've got a good reputation for sustainability, but we've never really done any kind of an audit of our sustainability actions. You know, were the things that we were doing really helping the world the way we thought we were going to? So she was able to take her expertise in sustainability, do an audit of the things that we were doing, and at the end of her internship period she actually gave us a presentation of about 15, 20 minutes where she basically said okay, here's the things you guys are doing. That's right. Here's the things you're doing that some could consider to be greenwashing. Here are the things you should be doing in the future, and we've kind of used that as a blueprint to help us improve our performance in that area for the last two years.
Speaker 1:Well, and, like you said, it sounds like that you had that resource which you wouldn't have had otherwise, right, it's just like you know inventorying the software, right, you know there's. You know that's a great benefit, you know, filling that in, meeting the students interests, right, but also benefiting me, which is really really neat. So what are the students saying when they get to the end of their ten weeks? What did, what do they say? They say, oh, this was great today. Say, this was you know terrible.
Speaker 2:What where? They where they headed, I guess the responses that we get from them in general have been quite good. They've learned a lot Some of the respondents. They've given them a chance to mature. They've learned how to work with people in ways they didn't think they would. They've learned a lot about teamwork. They've learned about responsibility.
Speaker 1:That's really neat, which is great. And then they go back, they get their college credit, right, are they all?
Speaker 2:getting credit for this. It depends. There are some schools that actually will give college credit for an internship. It's part of the requirements for the course and I work very closely with the administration to make sure that the students are doing what they're supposed to be doing. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing in terms of documenting what's being done, and then we report back and they'll get anywhere from usually about three credits for the course. That's really nice which is great, I mean that's huge right.
Speaker 1:You're working, obviously working, getting paid. You're learning, which is wonderful, which is awesome. What if you know, if there was someone that came to you and said, hey, I want to start an internship program, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them? What road would you send them down?
Speaker 2:For a corporation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, any small business, I guess what.
Speaker 2:I would say is to think about what you're going to offer the students and think about what you want them to offer you. I think the worst thing you can do is have an internship program where you bring a student in, give them high expectations and you don't do the work on your end to make sure that their needs are met. So one of the things that we do which I think has made us kind of unique, is that once a week I have one of the staffers have an informal breakfast with the kids. I'm not there, but it's like a 45-minute conversation over a nice breakfast where they say tell us how is it going, what do they like about the program, what don't they like about the program? What happened that was good last week, what happened that wasn't good last week? And we use that to kind of refine and rehome what we're doing.
Speaker 2:So for us it's become a process of continuous improvement. I don't view the program as being static. Every day it changes into something new, based upon the needs of the students and the needs of the resort. That's nice.
Speaker 1:That's really, really great. Any other thoughts or anything you think people should know about starting internship programs or running an internship program?
Speaker 2:I guess the thing I'd say is that reach out to people who have internship programs. Find out what's working, what's not working. I would canvas some of the local schools. Find out what they're looking for in internship programs. Do a lot of reading, be prepared to perhaps not get the best performance out of the students, but know that you're going to get their best effort and I think if you can respect that, then you'll have a program that's successful. And the other thing I do is, if you find someone that has a good program, don't be afraid to ask for guidance and help and give them, because I've found, in general, people that have good programs are more than willing to share their tools. And just as if people come to me and say, don, what's your program like, how can we emulate it, for me, being able to give them a sheaf of you know all the things that we've done, all of our various projects, performance review reports, course guidelines and those things, and share them willingly, that's great.
Speaker 1:That's a great segue, because we always ask our guests how do our listeners get in touch with you? So what's a good way to get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:if they want to. The best way to get in touch with me is through my email address at the resort that would be dongolini, at nonadamresortcom.
Speaker 1:Perfect, and certainly you can always email us podcast at paperchillscom as well. We you can always email us podcast at papertrailscom as well. We can get that over to Don, well, good, well, thank you very much. This was really insightful and I hope our listeners got some good tidbits out of it. So thanks, don, for the noniantum Talking about internships Talking. Just a reminder, don't forget to like follow share rate review. We are on Apple Podcasts, spotify everywhere. Email us if you have any questions. Podcast at papertrailscom. Thank you so much, everybody and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of a small business, big world.
Speaker 1:This podcast is a production of Paper Trails. We are a payroll and HR company based in Kennebunk, maine, and we serve small and mid-sized businesses across New England and the country. If you found this podcast helpful, don't forget to follow us at at Paper Trails Payroll across all social media platforms and check us out at papertrailscom for more information. As a reminder, the views, opinions and thoughts expressed by the hosts and guests alone. The material presented in this podcast is for general information purposes only and should not be considered legal or financial advice. By inviting this guest to our podcast, paper Trails does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific individual organization, product or service.