If you're considering bringing on interns Michelle Zaffino shared great tips with me back in 2021. I’m recapping our conversation here. Zaffino and I met in the Women Founders Unite Facebook Group. Highly recommend this group for all female founders. Let me know if you need an invitation.
Zaffino is a writer, published Author and founder of In The Stacks. In the Stacks combines top librarian book picks with users' reading preferences to provide recommendations and allows users to locate books nearby and online. They have raised over 200k, are revenue positive and last I checked were on their fourth iteration of the app.
In her past life Zaffino worked at a magazine, and started writing young adult novels. During her publishing journey she realized non traditional publishing was growing and that book discovery was broken. So she learned how to code and set out to build an app to fix the problem.
Based in California, In The Stacks has a consistent flow of interns working on the platform at any given time. They have had over 30 interns in the last five years, most of the interns are in the marketing department, with anywhere between 2-6 interns working at the company at a time.
Creating and managing an internship program is not an easy task by any means. If not set up properly it can be a waste of time. But with the right structure it can be fantastic. Zaffino swears by her internship program. As a busy founder it has been huge to have the support with the day to day as she chugs along with building the brand. Below are Zaffino’s best practices for building successful internship programs: