At first glance, there’s nothing the least bit unusual about the routine followed by Ben Griswold on any given workday.
He analyzes markets, crafts investment strategies and performs various other responsibilities assigned him by Kennedy Capital Management, a boutique Creve Coeur financial services firm.
All fairly normal in the world of finance, were it not for this:
Griswold is an intern.
The hand-wringing over the brain drain that siphons the best and brightest from St. Louis to New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other exotic locales (Minneapolis, anyone?) has gnarled a fair share of economic development knuckles in these precincts.
But there may be an antidote to St. Louis bidding farewell each Spring to newly-minted professionals that head for brighter lights the ink barely dry on diplomas from St. Louis University, Washington University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis (to name just a few).
It can be found in the paid internship programs offered by Kennedy Capital and its larger counterpart, Town & Country-based ScottTrade - two businesses that provide college students with far more than a single semester or a summer break to absorb the intricacies of the trade.
Companies that offer extended internships are the exception rather than the rule, said Peggy Gilbertson, intern coordinator at UMSL.
But the role of interns, she added, have thankfully evolved whether a college student is on the job for three months or three years.
“I’m definitely part of a team,” said UMSL student Ceri (cq.) Berble, an intern in the ScottTrade public relations department. “I don’t get coffee for anyone. I sit in team meetings and my ideas are heard. I’m not intimidated.”
The interns at both Kennedy Capital (12 currently) and ScottTrade (428 in company branches nationwide) further shatter the stereotype of college students relegated to menial tasks with zero professional value.
“I’d be embarrassed to ask our interns” to make coffee, said Caroline Dybala, the internship program manager at ScottTrade.
Basic economics guided Kennedy Capital co-founder Jerry Kennedy’s decision 20 years ago to hire interns for terms of as long as 36 months.
From a business perspective it makes little sense to show interns the exit just at the exact moment they were getting comfortable with the quotidian of institutional finance.
“There’s a lot to learn at the start,” said Alex Mosman, the manager of the intern cooperative learning program. “And if you only had a summer or a semester you’d learn the basics and then leave.”
A fair number of the 185 sophomores and juniors hired by Kennedy Capital out of SLU, WashU, UMSL and other schools over the past two decades have in fact stuck around a lot more than three years.
In fact, 25 percent of the full-time employees at the company’s Olive Boulevard headquarters are former interns, Mosman and the firm’s chief financial officer included.
The same is true at ScottTrade which moves between 50-60 percent of its interns into permanent positions.
ScottTrade launched its extended length internship 12 years ago as a farm system to accommodate job growth at its network of branch offices, said Caroline Dybala, the internship program manager.
Dybala knows first hand the benefit of the long-term internship.
She arrived as a ScottTrade intern in 2000 with a goal of working in human resources but uncertain about where she might fit into the field following graduation from xxxx.
Her six months at ScottTrade cleared the picture and paved the way for Dybala’s current position.
By encouraging college students to stay on the job longer than standard internships, the ScottTrade and Kennedy Capital programs support to the notion that an investment in the personal and professional of young employees is an investment in the community as well.
Kennedy Capital in fact estimates that at least 60 percent of its former interns have remained in St. Louis. (The numbers for ScottTrade are more difficult to track since its interns are scattered around the country.)
The first three months former intern Alex Mosman spent at Kennedy Capital in the capacity of 20-hour-a-week intern may have been “overwhelming.”
But he attributes a big part of steep learning curve to his invaluable interaction with the top company executives.
“You’re thrown into it right away,” said Mosman, now a full-time research associate and the manager of the firm’s intern cooperative learning program. “You’re sitting in on management meetings and having conversations with (the chief financial officer).”
Research director Michael Bertz notes that Kennedy interns as full members of the team are expected to interact with clients and do their share to bump up the firm’s bottom line.
Likewise at ScottTrade where Dybala says an intern is usually the company representative greeting customers that walk through the door of its branches.
Griswold’s tenure as a Kennedy Management intern will earn him him a valuable entry for the resume he’ll send to prospective employers following graduation next year from SLU with a bachelor’s degree in finance and a graduate degree in accounting.
As the head intern charged with coordinating the schedules of seven fellow undergrads in the finance department (four other interns serve in other Kennedy Capital departments) Griswold will bring supervisory experience to his first job out of college.
“I’m not saying I was a 100 percent proficient from day one. But I communicate here constantly with professionals and I won’t miss a beat wherever I go,” Griswold said.
The reluctance of companies large and small to hire untested graduates straight of college have long-since turned real-world internships into a pre-requisite for full-time employment.
The question facing St. Louis businesses is whether to make worthwhile internships available locally or open the door for top-drawer college students to look elsewhere.
For the answer, the local business community might want to consult Alex Mosman.
“You can leave St. Louis and take an internship somewhere else,” said Mosman. “But if you do that, you may be gone for good.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Don’t just always go out to lunch with, you know, a couple of your friends, but actually go out to lunch with people from other departments, from other companies, and explicitly address questions like, how do you see the industry changing? How do you do your job effectively? Is there anything I should learn from that in terms of how do I do my job effectively? Do you see interesting opportunities? And that’s not necessarily always a question of job transition. It can be. Those kinds of talking to other people, building those relationships, are, I think, the things that everyone needs to be doing.” - Reid Hoffman, co-author of LinkedIn and author of The Start-up of You.
Source: National Public Radio’s Morning Edition
BY THE NUMBERS
43 - Percentage of hiring managers who expressed concern the top talent in their organizations will voluntarily depart for other positions in 2012.
34 - Percentage of hiring managers working for companies that experienced voluntary turnover in 2011.
Source: Harris/CareerBuilder survey
FINAL WORD
“You know, it’s funny. I bet someone is going to listen to this and say, you know, if I went in to my boss at my workplace, and said, you know, I went out to lunch with this guy from another division, or another company entirely, and came up with this interesting idea, that they would say my boss doesn’t want to hear that.” - Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep’s response to Reid Hoffman’s observation.
“Well, then your boss is not really adapting to the modern world.” - Reid Hoffman
Source: National Public Radio’s Morning Edition
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