Virtual internships keep the talent pipeline open

DETROIT — Kristina Nunez is trying to land a full-time job in the auto industry — and do it without meeting her boss in person.

Many internship programs were canceled in the spring when offices across the country closed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But some have been able to pivot and allow interns to work online, just like their full-time counterparts.

Nunez and other work-from-home interns are confronting the difficulties of working with people they know only as tiny, pixelated faces or phantom voices on the phone. It's harder than in the past for interns hoping to snag job offers to make a strong impression or develop relationships with peers and mentors. But doing an internship online keeps them in the pipeline.

Nunez, 22, started a coveted product development internship at Ford Motor Co. on June 1. The fifth-year undergraduate at the University of Michigan is at a pivotal point in her career path.

"It's kind of my last time seeing how different companies work before I do pick one and then go full time," she said.

Nunez was supposed to work at Ford's Dearborn, Mich., headquarters but is instead working online from Ann Arbor, Mich.

Almost half of the respondents to an April poll by the National Association of Colleges and Employers said they had shifted to virtual internship programs.

Companies have to decide whether the work can be done remotely and how they can evaluate the interns' performance and capabilities. But if automakers and suppliers can't adapt to the global health crisis — while tech giants such as Twitter and Facebook embrace working from home — they risk losing access to talented graduates for future openings.

Despite emptying most of its offices, Ford is hosting 625 interns this summer.

"By redesigning our internship program to a virtual format, it enabled us to continue to strengthen our talent pipeline and to honor the commitment we made to these students when we hired them," said Lena Allison, Ford's U.S. talent acquisition and onboarding lead.

Working remotely gives them "hands-on" participation in work as it's done in 2020.

"These interns receive real-time professional experience because this is what we're all going through," she said.

To re-create networking opportunities, Ford set up a private Facebook page for interns and social events such as trivia nights through the Kahoot game platform.

Nunez has attended some of those trivia nights, but she wishes she could meet more of the other interns.

At previous engineering internships with seating supplier Adient, organized outings such as escape rooms and Detroit Tigers games helped her bond with other interns. But it was through informal interactions — conversations during carpool rides — that she really got to know them, she said.

"You talk ... 'What are you studying, where do you go to school, where are you from?' " She said. "And so a lot of that really helped — not so much what was actually planned, but just having a time to talk to them not in a work setting."

She also worries about how working online could affect the impression she makes on managers.

"I think being so uncertain on how they're going to be giving full-time offers kind of changes things," Nunez said. "A lot of the things I was going to be doing were in person, so it makes it a little bit harder for me to showcase the things that I excel at."

Nunez said networking has required more initiative, too.

"Online, I have to be much more intentional," she said. "You're in big meetings with people who might not always know you, and so it's really on me more to reach out to these people, set up one-on-one meetings, ask them questions."

Nunez is the only intern on Jason Balzar's body structures team. Most years, the intern is paired with a technical specialist, and they are seated together. But this summer, Nunez and the technical specialist "connect daily via email, Webex and instant messaging," Balzar said by email.

Last year, he typically met with the intern a few times a week in person.

He meets with Nunez "with a similar frequency," though mostly through email and instant messaging.

Nunez said accommodations Ford has made, such as modifying her project to facilitate online work, have helped.

"I'm definitely feeling more optimistic about the whole experience at this point than I think I was maybe a week or two ago," she said.

Other auto industry interns are also making the best of the situation.

Katlynn Stone, 23, is a senior at Michigan Technological University. She was scheduled to start working for Ford on Monday, June 29, as a software engineering intern from her Houghton, Mich., apartment.

She's relieved her internship wasn't canceled but is disappointed that social interaction will be limited.

"Making connections with different departments, people that you sit by, people that you work with — it's nice to be able to actually create a relationship with everybody around you," she said.

Adam Kahana, 23, is a sixth-year undergraduate at the University of Michigan and started as a global data insights and analytics intern at Ford on June 1. He said working from home in Ann Arbor has been a mostly seamless process.

"Just by the nature of the work I'm doing, everything's from my computer anyway," he said.

Ryan McLoughlin, 23, is a fifth-year undergraduate at the University of Michigan and started as an engine, airflow and combustion simulation intern at General Motors on June 1. He said staying on task while working remotely can be a struggle.

"I'm in a house with four other family members and would want to hang out, but it's like, I have eight hours of work I need to do," he said of his home in Powell, Ohio. He has since returned to Ann Arbor to work remotely from there.

Like Nunez, he finds he needs to be pro-active about communication with his employer.

Said McLoughlin: "There could be days where, if I didn't reach out, I wouldn't hear from them, so it's like, oh, I spent all day doing a training ... is this the right thing to do?"

One plus: no commute.

"I can basically get out of bed and make coffee and start work," McLoughlin said.

Whitney McDonald contributed to this report.