September 3, 2025 • 39 mins
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
Creating meaningful internship experiences isn't just good for students—it's vital for building your company's talent pipeline. But why do so many internship programs fall short, and how can we design systems that truly work?
Cheryl Rodness, Head of Global Brand at Quest Global, brings decades of experience developing internship programs at scale for companies like IBM, Juniper, and Calix. In our conversation, she reveals that the biggest failure point happens before interns even arrive: "Companies decide they want an intern but don't actually think about what the student will do." This fundamental oversight sets both parties up for disappointment.
What distinguishes exceptional internship programs? Cheryl outlines a comprehensive framework that includes clearly defined projects, dedicated mentorship, executive engagement, and structured evaluation. Rather than seeking high GPAs, successful managers look for "hunger and aspiration"—students eager to learn, contribute ideas, and take initiative. These qualities predict future success far better than academic credentials alone.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we explore how AI is reshaping internship work. While these tools enable interns to tackle more complex projects, Cheryl cautions against over-reliance: "AI is a first draft capability. If you don't have somebody looking at it for readability, context, and impact, you're dead in the water." Teaching interns to critically evaluate AI outputs prepares them for the hybrid human-AI workflows they'll encounter throughout their careers.
For companies looking to build or improve their internship programs, timing matters more than you might think. Start recruitment by December to attract top candidates, create detailed playbooks to guide both interns and managers, and always provide fair compensation. The investment pays dividends when exceptional interns transition into valuable full-time employees who already understand your company culture and operations.
Ready to transform how your organization approaches internships? Listen now to discover the systems and strategies that benefit both students and companies in creating truly meaningful professional development experiences.
🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:01):
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech
Marketing Rewired.
We just wrapped up our firstinternship at Mighty True in a
long time it's probably been atleast a couple years and I
wanted to take a hard look atwhat worked, what didn't and how
to make it better next time.
So to do that, I turned to myfriend, cheryl Rodness, who's
the head of global brand atQuest Global.
Cheryl's worked with a lot ofpeople over the years and has
(00:22):
built internship programs atscale during her time at Gina
Burke, cal, ex-anne and Quest,and she's really one of the best
people I know to talk about howto do this thing right.
In this episode, we got into whyso many internship programs
fail from the start, the systemsand playbooks that make them
successful, and how to evaluateinterns beyond GPA.
We also talked a bunch aboutwhat AI means for the future of
(00:45):
your early career work, and justtalked about AI in general.
It was a really fascinatingtalk.
If you're a college studentlooking to start an internship
or be attracted by a companythat's hiring interns, or if
you're someone like me who wantsto make their internships
better, this is a really goodwatch, so let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
(01:06):
Cheryl, thanks for being here.
I'm really looking forward tothis one.
Cheryl Rodness (01:17):
Well, thanks for having me, Kevin.
This is a topic that is very,very close to my heart as we
grow in our careers.
For me, the most importantthing is to make sure that we're
developing the next generationof leaders, and what better way
to start than with interns andkids coming out of school?
But if we don't train themright from the beginning,
goodness knows what shape we'regoing to leave our companies in.
Kevin Kerner (01:37):
For sure.
It just gives them suchperspective.
It's amazing.
Can you please start by justwalking through your career
journey and how you got into it?
Why did internships become sucha big interest for you?
Cheryl Rodness (01:48):
Well, to start all the way back, I am a career
marketer.
I have been primarily in thetechnology area for 20 years or
so I hate to date myself, butthat's the truth and I've worked
for great companies from IBM toJuniper, where you and I met
Unisys, Calix, where I reallybuilt up my skills and
(02:09):
internship programs, and now atQuest Global.
The reason I got intointernships was, funnily enough,
I think it spurred my interestbecause I've got two kids who
are in college and, as I saw, asthey were looking for summer
jobs, the challenges that theyhad in one finding an internship
and for my younger son, who wasactually in a co-op program,
(02:31):
learning from him, theexperiences he was going through
in those co-ops varied greatlyand I thought what a shame.
Companies are paying studentsto come in and they're not
getting the best out of thestudents and in some cases the
students are getting actuallycrappy experiences.
And so I thought if I developeda program that would help both
(02:52):
the student and the company, itwould be a win-win.
And so I had the opportunity atJuniper.
I did a little bit there, butreally built it when I was at
Calix.
Kevin Kerner (03:01):
I sort of agree.
It's like if you're going tospend time actually doing this
with a young student, like theworst thing you could do is do
it bad and then send them off asa start in their career, where
they just don't have goodperspective.
I wonder where you see most.
Where have you seen mostcompanies go wrong when bringing
in interns?
Like, where are the bigproblems with internship
programs?
Cheryl Rodness (03:20):
The biggest failure, quite honestly, is
right at the beginning, when youdecide you want to have an
intern or an internship programbut you actually don't think
about what the student is goingto do.
I have seen people say yeah, weknow we have lots of work to do
, let's bring on an intern.
The intern shows up and theyhave nothing formalized.
They don't know what theprojects are, they don't know
what the goals are, the outcomes, and so that student comes in
(03:41):
and really flounders.
They wait for stuff to be sentto them.
They can't you know, they can'tfigure out what they need to do
, who they need to connect with,what's expected of them.
The manager hasn't thought itthrough, the manager doesn't
give them time and right fromthe get go, it falls apart.
So when I've built programs itstarts from the ground up.
I can walk through the stepsfor you if you want, if that's
(04:02):
easier and then we can dive intoeach one.
Kevin Kerner (04:03):
Yeah, I'd love to talk about that and it sounds
like there's if I can paraphraseyou, it's really there's no
system in place, it's justyou're.
You find that like in myexperience, you find that maybe
you're a manager who gets anintern, you're told to take an
intern and you don't really havea system in place to do it.
You just get the intern andthen you have to deal with this
person.
He's now a cheap labor, let'ssay.
Cheryl Rodness (04:24):
Yeah, you're either told you're getting an
intern or you're asked hey, doyou want an intern?
And you're over swamped, oryour team's over swamped and you
go, yeah, I'd love an intern.
And that's where it ends.
Nobody thinks about it afterthat, till the person shows up
and it's like, oh, what am Igonna do with you?
Yeah, so walk through it, maybeat it really clearly and listen
(05:05):
for the things that you need tohear to know that that person
is going to fit into your team,into your company, to your
expectations.
So that's the first thing.
The second is, before theyactually show up, you have a
series of projects developed forthem with an expectation of
what they need to do, who theyneed to connect with, what the
(05:27):
outcomes are, so that when theyactually show up, you can walk
through those with them.
The second thing you want to dois make sure that you assign
them a buddy before they show upand that there's somebody who
is equivalent in age that theycan actually talk to, so they
can reach out to you and go.
I got a stupid question, don'twant to bug my manager or I
can't get to my manager.
(05:47):
Can I ask you something?
So it's a peer, it does nothave to be in your department,
but it's a peer that they feelcomfortable talking to.
The next thing you want to dois make sure that that person is
invited to every team meeting,whether or not it involves the
work that they're doing.
You want to make them feelincluded and know what's going
on, and it gives them a broaderperspective as to how their work
fits into what the broader teamis doing.
(06:15):
The other thing you want to dois make sure that your
executives at the company arefully onboarded.
So one of the things I did is Iset up a series of weekly sort
of meet and greets withexecutives.
So there would be one CXOassigned every week to have a
talk with the intern or interngroup if they were a cohort and
they would come in and it wouldbe an hour meeting and they
would give a bit of a backgroundabout who they are and what
they did in the company and whythey felt having interns was
(06:37):
valuable to the company, andthen talk a little bit about
their journey, because it helpsfor students to hear all the
different types of journeys youcan have over your career so
they don't feel like they're solocked when they're in school
and then you open it up to Q&A.
You give them a half an hourfor Q&A and, if you're smart,
you see a couple of questions sothat the students feel
comfortable asking becausesomething's been done first and
(07:00):
breaks the ice.
Then I always set up a sessionor two through the summer with
HR so that they can actuallybring in their resumes and talk
about resumes and talk aboutinterviewing, or a session just
for the juniors and the seniorsto be able to talk, or rising
juniors and seniors to talkabout what to ask when they're
looking to interview for theirfirst job.
And then there's weeklycheckpoints with your manager on
(07:22):
status of your projects andnobody feels like they're
failing.
There is probably a once-a-monthcheckpoint with the CXO that
you report up to, if you can, sothat they see visibility of
what they're doing.
Before the end of the summer ofthe internship I would set up a
cohort session for the studentsto present the work that
(07:47):
they've done to the CXOs as agroup, or at least the one that
heads up their department,depending upon how many interns
were in that group.
I created a template thathelped them understand how you
present to a CXO.
Walk through all theirpresentations beforehand to make
sure that they were appropriateand they demonstrated the value
(08:07):
they brought back to thecompany.
And then for the managers whohired them, we did an
out-of-program evaluation, wherea lot of companies have their
own nine-box system forevaluating their employees.
We had a four-box for studentsso that we could then go back
and rank the students and whenwe were looking to fill the
positions you always startedwith the top right quadrant and
(08:30):
that was kind of the system.
Kevin Kerner (08:31):
Yeah, that is incredible.
I mean, that's end to end.
Now I want to start back up atthe top, because there's some
really good stuff in there andthings that I probably got wrong
.
What type of jobs do you thinkare right for internships, or
how specific do you have to getin the job description when
you're looking for an intern?
Cheryl Rodness (08:48):
It depends on the job.
So when the last company I didthis with, we did internships,
literally we had 65 internsacross the entire organization,
including legal, believe it ornot so all the way through.
So if you're talkingspecifically about marketing,
you have to think about whereyou need the help.
First of all, a lot of placesare finding that social media is
(09:11):
a great place to add internshiptalent and, honestly, it is
because it's the interns and thestudents who better understand
the platforms.
They understand the type ofcontent that their friends are
consuming.
They know the best way tovideotape, to edit all those
kinds of things.
So I've often found socialmedia to be a really good
(09:31):
project for an intern.
But there's also copywritingthat could be done.
There could be art directionthat could be done.
If you're looking for in-housepeople, you take them out of
schools where they've got artprograms or English majors for
writing programs, typicallywhere they want to become
copywriters.
You can look at it from ademand gen standpoint in helping
(09:53):
them understand how you buildflows or how you use AI to
support your first draft ofpress releases or copy.
It can be all over the board,but think about it as stuff sort
of at the bottom of the funnel.
That needs to get done inprojects where you still have
oversight, but people have somecreativity to do the work.
Kevin Kerner (10:17):
Would you recommend that you keep it
pretty narrow?
Or do you, if, let's say it's amarketing intern, do you bring
them in and say, okay, you'regoing to be working on social
media this summer.
Or do you say, okay, there's abunch in the work stream that
you know we could have you workin and we're going to give you
full visibility to it all.
What works best to?
Cheryl Rodness (10:34):
whether or not they can handle that array.
I would say, from a lot of whatI've seen, giving them one
project, a good project, or aseries of projects within one
area works better because theycan get deep or at least they
can get more proficient.
If you move them around to toomany things, there are too many
(10:56):
connection points they have tomake, too many parts of the
puzzle that they have tounderstand.
That, I think, is a lot harder,unless they're really adept.
That's hard.
Kevin Kerner (11:05):
Yeah, and I suppose it still needs to prove
some value back to the companytoo.
So you want to point it in anarea where they can actually
make an impact.
Otherwise you're kind ofwasting money.
Cheryl Rodness (11:14):
You need to know what you expect to have
delivered and you need to setthose expectations.
You need to help them deliver.
You got to be available toanswer the questions and then
sure that they can get the workdone.
The first time is never goingto be right, the second time
probably not, but they'll getthere.
But if you're not giving themthe attention they need to
understand what has to be done,you'll never get the output and
(11:37):
then you'll go.
Well, that was a waste of mytime.
Kevin Kerner (11:39):
Yeah, that's really good advice.
Okay, so now let's say you'veidentified a position, source
the candidate.
Sourcing like intern sourcing.
We had our intern this summerwas referred by a friend of mine
who is a university professor,so it was real easy because this
is my best student.
But had I not had that channel,I wouldn't have known where to
go.
Where have you found the bestresources are to actually source
(12:00):
the right candidate, like wheredo you get the right candidates
from and how do you establishthose supply lines?
Cheryl Rodness (12:07):
Schools are a great place.
I hate to admit it, butchildren of friends and people
that work with you.
They've always got students whoare looking for summer jobs.
If they're the right fit, andthen quite honestly on LinkedIn.
You can post a summerinternship job on LinkedIn, as
many companies do Do itorganically.
You don't have to pay for apaid ad, just have everybody on
(12:28):
your team post hey, I've got ajob open.
Submit your resume here.
We were getting over 500resumes per internship at one
point in time.
I mean you will have noshortage.
The problem you have is siftingthrough them and deciding who
you want to go with and who youwant to interview.
The interviewing time takestime.
Kevin Kerner (12:47):
Yeah.
So beyond the GPA and sort oftheir resume, what qualities
have you found that predict astrong intern?
Cheryl Rodness (12:56):
I've never looked for a GPA, to be honest.
I look for what are youstudying?
Talk to me about your projects,Talk to me about what you're
interested in as a summer intern.
I look for someone who's gothunger, someone who's got
aspiration, someone who iswilling to ask for help, doesn't
(13:18):
believe that they know it all,and someone who's going to fit
into the team If they can showme that they understand
marketing or what we're lookingto do.
And you can get that throughconversation, talking about
projects they've done at work,at school rather, and what part
they had if it was a teamproject, et cetera, and just get
a sense for how hungry they areto learn and to do.
Kevin Kerner (13:40):
Yeah, the interest part is really interesting to
me because my son had aninternship and he worked for
Texas Parks and Wildlife but hewas interested in AI and so they
gave him not just thetraditional Texas Parks and
Wildlife stuff to do but theyalso gave him an AI project
which he was super interested inand he that was his interest
going in and it aligned withtheir interests and so he just
(14:01):
he went after it really hard,which is really fun to see.
Cheryl Rodness (14:04):
Yeah, If you can align a project to what the
student is interested in, has apassion for, they'll work twice
as hard.
This is something that theyhave an interest and passion for
.
It's not just, no, I've got toget a summer internship or oh, I
need to make some money so Ican go back to school, but
there's a real hunger and adesire and if you can hire for
hunger and aspiration, you'll dowell.
Kevin Kerner (14:25):
Yeah, so you went through onboarding and how that
works.
Walk me through what you'veseen work in a little more
detail.
Cheryl Rodness (14:32):
So you tell your team you're bringing on a
summer intern, this is theirname, this is what they'll be
doing, this is who they'll bereporting to.
And then you say I want a buddy, I need someone to partner with
this person that when they havea question they can just ping
you and ask you.
They don't have to wait for meif it's something you know, or
their manager if it's somethingsimple or they have a question
(14:54):
they're too embarrassed to ask,or they just want to talk.
They're frustrated aboutsomething and they need somebody
to reach out to.
Either the manager who's hiredthem will either know their
temperament and can know whowould be a good buddy, or you
ask on the team hey, who'd liketo be this person's buddy?
This is kind of what I sense ofthem and get somebody to
(15:15):
volunteer.
And then, when that personcomes in, you tell them look,
so-and-so's your buddy.
They're not your manager, apeer, they're the person you go
to when you have a quickquestion or you just need
somebody external to talk to.
You don't want to go to yourmanager, you don't want to go to
me.
It's not something where youhave to go to HR, but it's just
(15:38):
like hey, can I talk to you?
I need to know something or Iwant to get something off my
chest or whatever, and so that'sset up beforehand and you ask
those people to kind of meet inthe first week and then set up
their own rhythm.
Do they have regularconversations, or just hey,
reach out when you need me Withthe manager, the person they're
reporting to you.
Make it very clear you are tohave structured meetings with
this individual.
You have to have weeklyone-on-ones with them.
You've got to go through thework, you've got to take the
(15:59):
time to evaluate it.
You have to give them good,constructive feedback on what
they're doing and give them thetime that they need.
And then you also let them knowthat they should be invited.
That person should be invitedto all your team calls.
Get them added onto thecalendar.
If I'm doing all hands, if thisperson doesn't report to me and
I'm doing an all hands callwith my team, I invite that
individual.
Make them feel welcome.
(16:20):
The hardest part is when you area virtual company, as I
typically am and my teamstypically are.
You need that student to beable to make the connection and
you need to make them feel thatbeing remote is still a
professional job, right?
You can't be in your dorm roomwith you know, your bed unmade,
or roommate coming in and out ofyour dorm room or coming in the
(16:43):
bathroom.
You laugh.
But during the pandemic Iactually had to give etiquette
lessons to our cohort.
Hey guys, I know it's thepandemic, but shirts on no, tank
tops.
Women, your bed needs to bemade.
Your doors should be closed.
I don't want to see what'sgoing on in the hall.
If you're at home or in thedorm and you're working and
(17:04):
you're on a call, have a littlesign made up that says hey, I'm
on a business call, beprofessional.
I laugh.
But I had to teach some basicetiquette because they never had
experiences, they've neverworked remote and it's a
pandemic where everybody issuper casual.
Kevin Kerner (17:19):
Anyway, yeah, and they just may not have the
context of what a real businessis right, so giving them that
advice early on is really supervaluable.
For the mentors, though, dothey need their own set of
training?
Have you seen ways to get themmore engaged?
Do they have to raise theirhand as mentors?
Do they have to want to do itas well?
Cheryl Rodness (17:40):
It's a bit of both.
You never volunteer or I'venever voluntold anybody.
I've typically gone to someoneand said I'd like you to be
so-and-so's mentor, coming in,and they typically don't say no.
But you need to be mindful ofwho you're setting up.
There are people in yourorganization that you know would
be a good mentor, or a buddy,so to speak, and those who might
(18:03):
not necessarily give somebodythe time or whatever doesn't
have the right temperament to doit.
So you've got to match itappropriately and typically
you'll find especially if youfind somebody who's been out of
school for maybe two or threeyears they remember what it was
like coming in and they'll go.
Of course I'll give them thehelp and support they need.
I remember what that was likeand I you know how it can be
(18:25):
scary or intimidating or justunknown and they want to help.
Kevin Kerner (18:30):
Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense and I love
the idea of these checkpointsthat you mentioned along the way
, and even checkpoints with theCXO team.
That's really valuable becauseit gives them face time with the
senior people at the company.
Cheryl Rodness (18:45):
Now you have to prep them.
Kevin Kerner (18:46):
Yeah.
Cheryl Rodness (18:47):
You don't want to send them in blind, so I
would always take the time to gothrough.
What should the conversation becovered?
If you've got the time withthem, what are the kinds of
things that you should be askingthem?
If you're going to preparematerials, let's go through it
ahead of time.
Let's focus on what the keypoints should be, because you
don't want to waste the CXO'stime either, or the head of the
department or whoever.
(19:08):
You need to make sure that thetime is valuable and as seen as
valuable.
Kevin Kerner (19:13):
And me having to meet with HR is really useful
too, because that's anotherdepartment that they're going to
have to could potentially haveto deal with at the company.
So CXO HR super interesting.
So when you get to evaluationand feedback, you mentioned that
it needs to be relativelystructured.
What about hard skills versussoft skills?
Like you might have people thatare really good at their job
(19:33):
but didn't have any soft skills,or vice versa.
Cheryl Rodness (19:36):
That all gets built into the four box.
So if you think about the fourbox, you're looking at skills
and performance, and thatperformance often comes down to
a lot of soft skills, Like werethey able to interact?
How did other people feel aboutthem?
Now, depending as you go tobuild your four box or put your
person in the four box, what alot of us did is sent out
surveys to the people that theyinteracted with.
(19:57):
A very quick survey.
They just got a quick overviewof what was it like to work with
this person Efficient, did theyuse your time well?
Did they ask good questions?
Did they work well with theteam, et cetera.
Whatever the questions are thatyou need to ask, but that gives
you a better sense from theconstituents that they worked
with.
How did they perform?
And then you take that backwith your own feedback and then
(20:17):
the manager puts them in thefour box.
Kevin Kerner (20:19):
Have you ever seen an intern that just blows you
away at a project where you'relike, oh my gosh, this person is
a genius, we have to hire this.
This is amazing.
Cheryl Rodness (20:28):
Yeah, I've hired a couple of my interns.
In fact, I hired one intern whowas the son of a very good
friend.
His qualifications were perfect, exactly what I needed, so it
was the right person and broughthim in for an internship.
What we typically did was theywere brought in for a summer
(20:50):
internship.
If you liked them and they wereperforming well, you would ask
them, or they would ask you.
Do you connect?
Send this through some hoursduring the school year.
Students can always find timefor a few hours and if you liked
them and thought they wereworthwhile, you would say yes.
And then, as they came up tograduation, you kind of started
having conversations Can I hirethem With this individual?
(21:11):
Hired them during the summer,kept them through two semesters,
going back part-time, and thentalked to them about a full-time
job.
And they're there.
It's probably three years later.
Kevin Kerner (21:22):
Yeah, super interesting.
Cheryl Rodness (21:23):
I've done that with a few people.
Kevin Kerner (21:24):
Yeah, I mean that's what we're doing with
Audrey.
This intern is.
She's so good.
We were like, well, we're justgoing to keep her going through
the semester and typically theyoung adult wants the work.
But it's like perfect, becausethey slowly get integrated into
your company to the point wherethey can actually do the work
really well.
Cheryl Rodness (21:40):
And that's the nail on the head.
If you do this properly and youfind that diamond in the rough
and you keep them through theiracademic program, you help them
because what they learn theytake back into their classes and
they have real world examplesand experience.
They make some money, you getsome work done and then by the
time that they're ready to comeout of school they know your
(22:00):
company.
The onboarding and the ramp isreally minimal.
They can become productiveimmediately and they've got a
job and you've got somebodywaiting for you.
Kevin Kerner (22:08):
If you just off top of your head, like the best
interns, what makes them standout, what makes them become,
can't miss hires.
Cheryl Rodness (22:16):
Hunger and aspiration.
They ask for more.
They do what they need to do.
They do it well.
They do it independently.
They come back with ideas.
They're self-sufficient, likethey know what they need to do,
much like they would in school.
They take the understanding ofwhat you need them to do and
they run with it.
And then they have aspirationand such that they think of the
next thing hey, could we bedoing this?
(22:41):
Hey, have you thought aboutthat?
Whether or not it's a good ideaor not doesn't matter.
It's their thinking about whatcan we do?
That's going to help advancethe business goals.
Kevin Kerner (22:46):
How do you measure , or should you measure, the ROI
in some meaningful way for thebusiness?
Cheryl Rodness (22:53):
We always measure it in terms of did the
projects that we laid out to bedone get done, and did that
alleviate the bandwidth ofothers on the team to do other
work that was probably better totheir skill set and they didn't
have the time to do previously?
And that's how we would measureit.
Was the person effective?
(23:13):
Did they get the work done thatwe needed to get done?
Did it allow the other membersof the team to do other work?
Kevin Kerner (23:20):
Paid or free internships.
Cheryl Rodness (23:21):
I don't think it's fair to ask kids to work
for free, would you?
Kevin Kerner (23:25):
I agree, I totally agree, and we're a small
company and I wouldn't askanyone to work for free.
Yeah, it just sort of sets up abad feeling, I guess, between
parties.
Cheryl Rodness (23:36):
It does, and this is a discussion for another
podcast but the loyalty or thecommitment that this generation
coming out of school has towardscompanies is very different
than probably what you and Ihave, kevin.
And so if you're not going totreat them right, why should
they treat you right?
Right, so they'll take moredays off, they'll be less
committed.
I'm not getting paid for thisanyway.
(23:57):
What's it really matter?
Now, some will have a muchharder work ethic and that won't
matter to them.
It's all the experience.
But I just don't feel it's fairto ask people to work and not
pay them for it.
Kevin Kerner (24:09):
Would you hire someone from out of college,
after college high school degreeLike does it matter?
Cheryl Rodness (24:17):
Hiring full-time .
Kevin Kerner (24:19):
No, no, not hire, but intern.
Cheryl Rodness (24:21):
Yeah okay so personal preference versus
what's been done.
My preference, where I havefound the greatest success, is
to hire interns who are at leastsophomores they have.
They're in the second year ofuniversity, they have a little
bit more maturity, a little bitmore discipline, a little bit
more knowledge from the coursesthey've taken and can connect
(24:44):
the dots better.
Having said that, I've hadother interns who were freshmen,
or a couple at a high school.
Again, you have to adjust thework expectation.
Kevin Kerner (24:58):
Really good advice .
Like I wouldn't have thoughtthe sophomore, but I think
you're dead on.
I think that seems about right.
Cheryl Rodness (25:03):
I've had enough experience to tell you that a
sophomore is going to be good, Ajunior is better.
You know sort of a risingsenior is great, but they tend
to also have more choices.
Kevin Kerner (25:16):
And then I had one other sort of fast question for
you, because we find a lot ofgreat talent in Central and
South America.
Global, okay, or should youkeep it local, to the company,
the region that you're in, orwould you hire globally for any
internship?
I mean, what are the nuances?
You've been at some massivecompanies, so I wonder what your
(25:36):
perspective is there.
Cheryl Rodness (25:36):
In terms of region, the interesting thing is
, if you're going to pay them,they actually have to be in a
region where you have an office.
Because of the finance issuesand the legal issues of it all,
I think they have to maybe notso much legal, but financially.
You can't pay them from the USif they're in Central America or
if they're in Japan, or ifthey're in India or somewhere
else.
It's really difficult.
(25:57):
So you want to hire them forthe region in which the work is
being done and the manager islocated.
Time zones matter.
Kevin Kerner (26:07):
Yeah, yeah.
Especially if you're a youngperson and someone's across the
world and you're working daysand their night, it just does
not seem like a great fit.
Great, okay, this is greatadvice.
If I'm a marketing leader thatwants to start building an
internship program tomorrow,where would I start?
What would be the first fewthings you'd start with?
(26:29):
Where would I start?
Cheryl Rodness (26:29):
What would be the first few things you'd start
with Sit down with your teamand understand what work really
needs to get done and can getdone by somebody else
no-transcript and then reallydefine what those jobs are, what
(26:55):
the projects are, what theoutcomes are, the deliverables,
and be realistic of what can bedone within 10, 12 weeks.
I also wouldn't do it in lessthan really 10 weeks.
Kevin Kerner (27:08):
Yeah, good advice.
So 10 weeks, you think, is likethe minimum.
Cheryl Rodness (27:14):
Yeah, we've had people for eight weeks, which
you can do, but again you haveto adjust what can be done
because your first couple ofweeks are going to be them
floundering and finding theirway around.
Kevin Kerner (27:24):
You know it's interesting too for your team.
I hadn't thought of this, butwe preach this a lot at Mighty
and True about building systemsand automation and repeatability
and standard operatingprocedures to scale and you've
been at bigger companies so theyprobably had a lot more scale.
But if you're forcing yourselfto go through the process of
hiring an intern and reallygoing through that, you really
(27:46):
have to have systems that youcan show them to work on things.
You can't just like drop themin and say, hey, figure this,
you can tell them, figure thisout.
But you could tell them figureout how to build a system for
you, which I did with my intern.
But it really gets your companythinking about like, how do we
repeat the things that we do?
Cheryl Rodness (28:03):
Playbooks are really, really important.
We have a ton of them at QuestGlobal, across the marketing
organization.
Every time we do something new,create something new.
We create a playbook of how doyou do this, how do you execute
on this type of program oractivity, or deliverable or
whatever, because you do need topoint people to playbooks.
Kevin Kerner (28:25):
There's a lot of companies that don't have that
same bias.
So if you're a company thatdoesn't have any playbooks and
you're just, it's all done byyou know everyone's sort of
tribal knowledge, it seems likeit'd be a lot harder to have
someone younger in.
Cheryl Rodness (28:39):
But then you can actually ask them to document
and create the playbook for you.
Yeah, yeah, good point, if youdon't have one, you're saying go
ahead and do this, let themdocument what they're doing,
because they're learning it forthe first time and their
documentation will be prettythorough.
Kevin Kerner (28:53):
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the future.
So the future of everythingright now is AI.
How do you think internshipswill evolve as AI reshapes?
Early career work Is there anyeffect that AI has on this stuff
?
Cheryl Rodness (29:07):
Well, again, if we're talking about marketing
for sure, I had a summer internand I had her using AI.
I had her working on copy, onscripts, on PR releases, and I
said to her, I'm going to walkyou through our system, which is
it's an intake, where you sitdown with the expert, the SME,
(29:27):
and ask a series of questionsand get the input.
And then I want you to, so Iwant you to go through that and
understand what an intakesession looks like.
And then you're going to takethe input and you're going to
put it into AI and you're goingto ask it to create a press
release or a script or whateverit was that we were doing.
And then I want you to read it,make sure it makes sense,
massage it and then bring itback to me and we can take a
(29:50):
look at.
You know how we execute on this.
The biggest mistake people makeis that they feed it into AI
and go okay, I'm done now.
Kevin Kerner (29:58):
Yeah.
Cheryl Rodness (29:58):
Oh, if I take out the em dashes, it looks like
I wrote it.
No, they're going to have touse AI.
We all need to use AI.
I think it's a brilliant tool,but I call it first draft.
Ai is a first draft capabilityfrom a marketing standpoint.
It saves time because it allowsyou to get the basics behind
you, but if you don't havesomebody looking at it, reading
(30:21):
it, for readability, for context, for impact, for all the things
that we need, relevant emotivedistinctive makes sense that
it's coming from your company.
The quotes make sense.
Proven emotive distinctivemakes sense that it's coming
from your company.
The quotes make sense.
They're in the tone of voicefrom your people, the tone of
voice of the release, the script, whatever it is, then you're
(30:44):
dead in the water.
Kevin Kerner (30:44):
There's no sense using it.
So it's a great way to startfirst draft.
Yeah, I totally completelyagree.
And what's an amazing scenariofor a young person in an
internship is it seems likeusing AI and with deep research
and things, they can get theinformation so much faster and
they can talk to AI to get whatthey need to get something done,
where before AI it would havebeen a lot of Googling and
(31:05):
research and things they wouldhave had to do on their own.
So it seems like it speeds theoutcome to that first draft for
them.
But I agree, they do needsomeone with some context that
has that can review things.
We had a lot of AI output fromour intern this semester this
summer and it was great.
But you know, having done thisfor close to 40 years now, I'm
(31:27):
like, okay, well, that's itneeds.
It needs a lot of massaging,but isn't it now that, like if
you're a intern, you may be ableto dig into stuff that you
wouldn't have been able to diginto before, just because you
have this amazing coworker tool?
Cheryl Rodness (31:43):
I agree, and I think it gives you exposure to
do things, because AI allows youto get ahead of it.
So if you're not a great writer, it gives you a way to start
and then you can read through itand figure a better way to
massage it.
But I can't stress enough howimportant it is to read what's
coming out of AI.
I'm going to give you anexample.
I was working on an email forsomething, for a project, and it
(32:10):
was going to and it was goingto a potential client and it was
just taking.
I had pulled some informationabout their quarterly earnings
and the email that came backdear so-and-so congratulations
on an amazing quarter.
And I looked at it and wentwait a minute, I don't think
(32:31):
they had an amazing quarter.
When I take a look at thefinancials, well, the amazing
quarter was they went fromlosing like 14, you know
negative 14 the previous quarterto negative six or something
like that this quarter.
You know AI looked at it as anamazing quarter.
I'm like whoa, congratulationson only being down 6%.
So again I caution don't takeAI you know it's a first blush
(32:55):
without so true, it's just sotrue.
Kevin Kerner (32:58):
And I would wonder like, okay, well, fast forward
a couple more years, two, threemore years.
You're going to have whateverGen Z and Gen Alpha in
internships.
They're going to have a wholedifferent like look on working,
I guess than what it is now, butthey're also going to be very
AI native in everything thatthey do.
So it's going to get better.
Cheryl Rodness (33:16):
AI native and social media native.
The social media landscape andthe platforms change so
frequently now.
What was in six months ago isnow out.
What's the new format?
What's the new trend?
If you need somebody who's ontop of that, because, I hate to
say it you and I aren't.
Kevin Kerner (33:32):
Yeah.
Cheryl Rodness (33:32):
Probably not.
Kevin Kerner (33:33):
Yeah, no, no.
I gave Audrey a few things forsocial media and it was so much
better than anything I couldhave done I would have never
thought of how she did.
The other thing I think is goodtoo is field marketing and
events.
I think internships are becauseevents are so logical in how
you put them together.
You got to kind of see aroundthe corners of things.
That can go wrong and a lot cango wrong, but it is a lot of
(33:54):
sort of critical thinking that Ithink is really good for
interns to do.
Cheryl Rodness (33:58):
Yeah, the detail required behind an event is
actually really good for them tounderstand discipline.
The challenge I would say withsome interns is they may not
have necessarily the sense ofstyle or finesse that you may be
looking for, so you always needto kind of look over the
shoulder a little bit.
Kevin Kerner (34:14):
Clearly Well, this has been great.
I mean, I think we've gonethrough just about everything
onboarding, mentorship I'vetaken a ton of notes evaluation,
hiring, roi really good stuff.
I have one last thing I do withmy guests here, which is called
AI Roulette, and it's basicallyI load the questions I was
going to ask in your profileinto Perplexity and then I hit
(34:37):
Go and it gives me a questionand typically the Roulette
questions are the best questionsof all because my questions
suck so bad.
So let me hit Send here andlet's see what it does.
This is interesting.
Okay, it says Under whatcircumstances would you trust AI
to entirely pick your interns?
Cheryl Rodness (34:59):
Circumstances.
I really have to think aboutthis.
I could come up with thereallys.
That's okay.
Kevin Kerner (35:06):
I know what my answer would be.
Cheryl Rodness (35:10):
Planning a three-year-old birthday party?
Yeah right.
Kevin Kerner (35:14):
Yeah, if you were just doing the bare minimum,
that would be it.
Cheryl Rodness (35:20):
I don't know.
I don't know what I would trustAI to do 100% From a work
perspective, nothing From apersonal perspective.
They can plan a dinner partyand recipes for me.
Kevin Kerner (35:31):
That is dead on.
That's exactly what I wasthinking.
I was like not much, I wouldmaybe manage my calendar, I
guess.
And that just shows you theconfidence we have in AI right.
Cheryl Rodness (35:43):
Exactly, yeah, they can plan my dinner.
If dinner's no good, I can tossit out.
Kevin Kerner (35:46):
Yeah right.
Cheryl Rodness (35:47):
No harm, no foul .
Kevin Kerner (35:48):
Good question, perplexity.
But no, we would not, we're notgoing to trust it.
You know, I saw something today.
I was just reading about howcandidates don't trust that AI
can pick them as the rightcandidate.
So all these young collegegraduates there's a bunch of AI
systems that are now trying topick them as a candidate.
They're sifting through all theresumes that companies get.
(36:09):
Like 60 or 70% don't believethe AI is picking them right,
but get.
And like 60 or 70% don'tbelieve the AI is picking them
right, but at the same time,like almost 60 to 70%, are using
AI to write their resumes andcover letters and all those
things.
It's kind of like the battle ofthe two AIs when it comes to
hiring these days.
Cheryl Rodness (36:27):
I would agree.
I think HR in many cases not inall rely too much on AI to sift
through resumes because they'reputting in keywords and they
could be missing lots ofkeywords.
I also know of students who arewriting multiple resumes and
sending them through to acompany to see which word gets
picked up.
So I don't know if that's justa waste of time and overflow
(36:48):
into an inbox for resumes, to beperfectly honest, and there's
nothing.
When you're hiring somebody,you have to talk to them, you
have to get a sense of who theyare.
I don't think you can siftthrough by looking at keywords.
You're going to miss people.
You're going to miss apotential diamond in the rough
(37:08):
or a real jewel because theirkeywords didn't match.
Kevin Kerner (37:12):
It's also forcing a lot more in-person interviews
too, cause you have, and youknow, if the person's not remote
or if you're not remote, you'reactually want to meet the
person, cause there's just somuch, so much out there.
That's pretty crazy.
This is really great.
My next internship.
I have a lot of work to do tomake it, to make it better.
Cheryl Rodness (37:30):
I can help you.
Kevin Kerner (37:31):
Yeah, yeah, I will definitely be calling you in
the spring next year, becausewe'll do it again.
It was a great experience.
It's just so fun to see theseyoung people.
Okay, spring is too late.
Cheryl Rodness (37:41):
That's the other thing, yep.
So if you want your pick ofstudents, you should have your
resumes up and ready to go byDecember.
Kevin Kerner (37:49):
Yeah, I guess you're right.
Students are already well intolooking in January.
Cheryl Rodness (37:52):
Yeah, if you're waiting till April or May.
I hate to say it, but you'regetting people who haven't been
able to get an internship orwere too late and too lazy to
start looking early, or havebeen turned down by other places
.
Not that I mean to generalizeto students, but I have found
that when you wait too late,you're not necessarily getting
your choice.
Kevin Kerner (38:12):
Yeah, that's a good ending advice.
Really good stuff.
Cheryl, this has been amazing.
I know people want to reach outto you and talk to you some of
this stuff and I know you'realso very busy at Quest too, on
the brand side, but how canpeople reach you if they want to
get ahold of you to talk to youabout any of your knowledge
around internships?
Cheryl Rodness (38:30):
You can find me on LinkedIn.
It's Cheryl Rodness.
You can certainly reach out tome at Cheryl Rodness at
quest-globalcom, I'm easy tofind.
Kevin Kerner (38:39):
Cool, I'll link you.
Cheryl Rodness (38:40):
I'm happy to talk to people about this.
I love this topic.
Kevin Kerner (38:42):
Yeah, I know You're great.
You've always been a great sortof teacher and mentor for me,
so I do appreciate ourfriendship.
Cheryl Rodness (38:55):
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast here
and putting up with me and Ihope to see you again soon.
Thanks, kevin, it was apleasure, a lot of fun.
Okay, I'll see you, take care.
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech
Marketing Rewired.
We just wrapped up our firstinternship at Mighty True in a
long time it's probably been atleast a couple years and I
wanted to take a hard look atwhat worked, what didn't and how
to make it better next time.
So to do that, I turned to myfriend, cheryl Rodness, who's
the head of global brand atQuest Global.
Cheryl's worked with a lot ofpeople over the years and has
(00:22):
built internship programs atscale during her time at Gina
Burke, cal, ex-anne and Quest,and she's really one of the best
people I know to talk about howto do this thing right.
In this episode, we got into whyso many internship programs
fail from the start, the systemsand playbooks that make them
successful, and how to evaluateinterns beyond GPA.
We also talked a bunch aboutwhat AI means for the future of
(00:45):
your early career work, and justtalked about AI in general.
It was a really fascinatingtalk.
If you're a college studentlooking to start an internship
or be attracted by a companythat's hiring interns, or if
you're someone like me who wantsto make their internships
better, this is a really goodwatch, so let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
(01:06):
Cheryl, thanks for being here.
I'm really looking forward tothis one.
Cheryl Rodness (01:17):
Well, thanks for having me, Kevin.
This is a topic that is very,very close to my heart as we
grow in our careers.
For me, the most importantthing is to make sure that we're
developing the next generationof leaders, and what better way
to start than with interns andkids coming out of school?
But if we don't train themright from the beginning,
goodness knows what shape we'regoing to leave our companies in.
Kevin Kerner (01:37):
For sure.
It just gives them suchperspective.
It's amazing.
Can you please start by justwalking through your career
journey and how you got into it?
Why did internships become sucha big interest for you?
Cheryl Rodness (01:48):
Well, to start all the way back, I am a career
marketer.
I have been primarily in thetechnology area for 20 years or
so I hate to date myself, butthat's the truth and I've worked
for great companies from IBM toJuniper, where you and I met
Unisys, Calix, where I reallybuilt up my skills and
(02:09):
internship programs, and now atQuest Global.
The reason I got intointernships was, funnily enough,
I think it spurred my interestbecause I've got two kids who
are in college and, as I saw, asthey were looking for summer
jobs, the challenges that theyhad in one finding an internship
and for my younger son, who wasactually in a co-op program,
(02:31):
learning from him, theexperiences he was going through
in those co-ops varied greatlyand I thought what a shame.
Companies are paying studentsto come in and they're not
getting the best out of thestudents and in some cases the
students are getting actuallycrappy experiences.
And so I thought if I developeda program that would help both
(02:52):
the student and the company, itwould be a win-win.
And so I had the opportunity atJuniper.
I did a little bit there, butreally built it when I was at
Calix.
Kevin Kerner (03:01):
I sort of agree.
It's like if you're going tospend time actually doing this
with a young student, like theworst thing you could do is do
it bad and then send them off asa start in their career, where
they just don't have goodperspective.
I wonder where you see most.
Where have you seen mostcompanies go wrong when bringing
in interns?
Like, where are the bigproblems with internship
programs?
Cheryl Rodness (03:20):
The biggest failure, quite honestly, is
right at the beginning, when youdecide you want to have an
intern or an internship programbut you actually don't think
about what the student is goingto do.
I have seen people say yeah, weknow we have lots of work to do
, let's bring on an intern.
The intern shows up and theyhave nothing formalized.
They don't know what theprojects are, they don't know
what the goals are, the outcomes, and so that student comes in
(03:41):
and really flounders.
They wait for stuff to be sentto them.
They can't you know, they can'tfigure out what they need to do
, who they need to connect with,what's expected of them.
The manager hasn't thought itthrough, the manager doesn't
give them time and right fromthe get go, it falls apart.
So when I've built programs itstarts from the ground up.
I can walk through the stepsfor you if you want, if that's
(04:02):
easier and then we can dive intoeach one.
Kevin Kerner (04:03):
Yeah, I'd love to talk about that and it sounds
like there's if I can paraphraseyou, it's really there's no
system in place, it's justyou're.
You find that like in myexperience, you find that maybe
you're a manager who gets anintern, you're told to take an
intern and you don't really havea system in place to do it.
You just get the intern andthen you have to deal with this
person.
He's now a cheap labor, let'ssay.
Cheryl Rodness (04:24):
Yeah, you're either told you're getting an
intern or you're asked hey, doyou want an intern?
And you're over swamped, oryour team's over swamped and you
go, yeah, I'd love an intern.
And that's where it ends.
Nobody thinks about it afterthat, till the person shows up
and it's like, oh, what am Igonna do with you?
Yeah, so walk through it, maybeat it really clearly and listen
(05:05):
for the things that you need tohear to know that that person
is going to fit into your team,into your company, to your
expectations.
So that's the first thing.
The second is, before theyactually show up, you have a
series of projects developed forthem with an expectation of
what they need to do, who theyneed to connect with, what the
(05:27):
outcomes are, so that when theyactually show up, you can walk
through those with them.
The second thing you want to dois make sure that you assign
them a buddy before they show upand that there's somebody who
is equivalent in age that theycan actually talk to, so they
can reach out to you and go.
I got a stupid question, don'twant to bug my manager or I
can't get to my manager.
(05:47):
Can I ask you something?
So it's a peer, it does nothave to be in your department,
but it's a peer that they feelcomfortable talking to.
The next thing you want to dois make sure that that person is
invited to every team meeting,whether or not it involves the
work that they're doing.
You want to make them feelincluded and know what's going
on, and it gives them a broaderperspective as to how their work
fits into what the broader teamis doing.
(06:15):
The other thing you want to dois make sure that your
executives at the company arefully onboarded.
So one of the things I did is Iset up a series of weekly sort
of meet and greets withexecutives.
So there would be one CXOassigned every week to have a
talk with the intern or interngroup if they were a cohort and
they would come in and it wouldbe an hour meeting and they
would give a bit of a backgroundabout who they are and what
they did in the company and whythey felt having interns was
(06:37):
valuable to the company, andthen talk a little bit about
their journey, because it helpsfor students to hear all the
different types of journeys youcan have over your career so
they don't feel like they're solocked when they're in school
and then you open it up to Q&A.
You give them a half an hourfor Q&A and, if you're smart,
you see a couple of questions sothat the students feel
comfortable asking becausesomething's been done first and
(07:00):
breaks the ice.
Then I always set up a sessionor two through the summer with
HR so that they can actuallybring in their resumes and talk
about resumes and talk aboutinterviewing, or a session just
for the juniors and the seniorsto be able to talk, or rising
juniors and seniors to talkabout what to ask when they're
looking to interview for theirfirst job.
And then there's weeklycheckpoints with your manager on
(07:22):
status of your projects andnobody feels like they're
failing.
There is probably a once-a-monthcheckpoint with the CXO that
you report up to, if you can, sothat they see visibility of
what they're doing.
Before the end of the summer ofthe internship I would set up a
cohort session for the studentsto present the work that
(07:47):
they've done to the CXOs as agroup, or at least the one that
heads up their department,depending upon how many interns
were in that group.
I created a template thathelped them understand how you
present to a CXO.
Walk through all theirpresentations beforehand to make
sure that they were appropriateand they demonstrated the value
(08:07):
they brought back to thecompany.
And then for the managers whohired them, we did an
out-of-program evaluation, wherea lot of companies have their
own nine-box system forevaluating their employees.
We had a four-box for studentsso that we could then go back
and rank the students and whenwe were looking to fill the
positions you always startedwith the top right quadrant and
(08:30):
that was kind of the system.
Kevin Kerner (08:31):
Yeah, that is incredible.
I mean, that's end to end.
Now I want to start back up atthe top, because there's some
really good stuff in there andthings that I probably got wrong
.
What type of jobs do you thinkare right for internships, or
how specific do you have to getin the job description when
you're looking for an intern?
Cheryl Rodness (08:48):
It depends on the job.
So when the last company I didthis with, we did internships,
literally we had 65 internsacross the entire organization,
including legal, believe it ornot so all the way through.
So if you're talkingspecifically about marketing,
you have to think about whereyou need the help.
First of all, a lot of placesare finding that social media is
(09:11):
a great place to add internshiptalent and, honestly, it is
because it's the interns and thestudents who better understand
the platforms.
They understand the type ofcontent that their friends are
consuming.
They know the best way tovideotape, to edit all those
kinds of things.
So I've often found socialmedia to be a really good
(09:31):
project for an intern.
But there's also copywritingthat could be done.
There could be art directionthat could be done.
If you're looking for in-housepeople, you take them out of
schools where they've got artprograms or English majors for
writing programs, typicallywhere they want to become
copywriters.
You can look at it from ademand gen standpoint in helping
(09:53):
them understand how you buildflows or how you use AI to
support your first draft ofpress releases or copy.
It can be all over the board,but think about it as stuff sort
of at the bottom of the funnel.
That needs to get done inprojects where you still have
oversight, but people have somecreativity to do the work.
Kevin Kerner (10:17):
Would you recommend that you keep it
pretty narrow?
Or do you, if, let's say it's amarketing intern, do you bring
them in and say, okay, you'regoing to be working on social
media this summer.
Or do you say, okay, there's abunch in the work stream that
you know we could have you workin and we're going to give you
full visibility to it all.
What works best to?
Cheryl Rodness (10:34):
whether or not they can handle that array.
I would say, from a lot of whatI've seen, giving them one
project, a good project, or aseries of projects within one
area works better because theycan get deep or at least they
can get more proficient.
If you move them around to toomany things, there are too many
(10:56):
connection points they have tomake, too many parts of the
puzzle that they have tounderstand.
That, I think, is a lot harder,unless they're really adept.
That's hard.
Kevin Kerner (11:05):
Yeah, and I suppose it still needs to prove
some value back to the companytoo.
So you want to point it in anarea where they can actually
make an impact.
Otherwise you're kind ofwasting money.
Cheryl Rodness (11:14):
You need to know what you expect to have
delivered and you need to setthose expectations.
You need to help them deliver.
You got to be available toanswer the questions and then
sure that they can get the workdone.
The first time is never goingto be right, the second time
probably not, but they'll getthere.
But if you're not giving themthe attention they need to
understand what has to be done,you'll never get the output and
(11:37):
then you'll go.
Well, that was a waste of mytime.
Kevin Kerner (11:39):
Yeah, that's really good advice.
Okay, so now let's say you'veidentified a position, source
the candidate.
Sourcing like intern sourcing.
We had our intern this summerwas referred by a friend of mine
who is a university professor,so it was real easy because this
is my best student.
But had I not had that channel,I wouldn't have known where to
go.
Where have you found the bestresources are to actually source
(12:00):
the right candidate, like wheredo you get the right candidates
from and how do you establishthose supply lines?
Cheryl Rodness (12:07):
Schools are a great place.
I hate to admit it, butchildren of friends and people
that work with you.
They've always got students whoare looking for summer jobs.
If they're the right fit, andthen quite honestly on LinkedIn.
You can post a summerinternship job on LinkedIn, as
many companies do Do itorganically.
You don't have to pay for apaid ad, just have everybody on
(12:28):
your team post hey, I've got ajob open.
Submit your resume here.
We were getting over 500resumes per internship at one
point in time.
I mean you will have noshortage.
The problem you have is siftingthrough them and deciding who
you want to go with and who youwant to interview.
The interviewing time takestime.
Kevin Kerner (12:47):
Yeah.
So beyond the GPA and sort oftheir resume, what qualities
have you found that predict astrong intern?
Cheryl Rodness (12:56):
I've never looked for a GPA, to be honest.
I look for what are youstudying?
Talk to me about your projects,Talk to me about what you're
interested in as a summer intern.
I look for someone who's gothunger, someone who's got
aspiration, someone who iswilling to ask for help, doesn't
(13:18):
believe that they know it all,and someone who's going to fit
into the team If they can showme that they understand
marketing or what we're lookingto do.
And you can get that throughconversation, talking about
projects they've done at work,at school rather, and what part
they had if it was a teamproject, et cetera, and just get
a sense for how hungry they areto learn and to do.
Kevin Kerner (13:40):
Yeah, the interest part is really interesting to
me because my son had aninternship and he worked for
Texas Parks and Wildlife but hewas interested in AI and so they
gave him not just thetraditional Texas Parks and
Wildlife stuff to do but theyalso gave him an AI project
which he was super interested inand he that was his interest
going in and it aligned withtheir interests and so he just
(14:01):
he went after it really hard,which is really fun to see.
Cheryl Rodness (14:04):
Yeah, If you can align a project to what the
student is interested in, has apassion for, they'll work twice
as hard.
This is something that theyhave an interest and passion for
.
It's not just, no, I've got toget a summer internship or oh, I
need to make some money so Ican go back to school, but
there's a real hunger and adesire and if you can hire for
hunger and aspiration, you'll dowell.
Kevin Kerner (14:25):
Yeah, so you went through onboarding and how that
works.
Walk me through what you'veseen work in a little more
detail.
Cheryl Rodness (14:32):
So you tell your team you're bringing on a
summer intern, this is theirname, this is what they'll be
doing, this is who they'll bereporting to.
And then you say I want a buddy, I need someone to partner with
this person that when they havea question they can just ping
you and ask you.
They don't have to wait for meif it's something you know, or
their manager if it's somethingsimple or they have a question
(14:54):
they're too embarrassed to ask,or they just want to talk.
They're frustrated aboutsomething and they need somebody
to reach out to.
Either the manager who's hiredthem will either know their
temperament and can know whowould be a good buddy, or you
ask on the team hey, who'd liketo be this person's buddy?
This is kind of what I sense ofthem and get somebody to
(15:15):
volunteer.
And then, when that personcomes in, you tell them look,
so-and-so's your buddy.
They're not your manager, apeer, they're the person you go
to when you have a quickquestion or you just need
somebody external to talk to.
You don't want to go to yourmanager, you don't want to go to
me.
It's not something where youhave to go to HR, but it's just
(15:38):
like hey, can I talk to you?
I need to know something or Iwant to get something off my
chest or whatever, and so that'sset up beforehand and you ask
those people to kind of meet inthe first week and then set up
their own rhythm.
Do they have regularconversations, or just hey,
reach out when you need me Withthe manager, the person they're
reporting to you.
Make it very clear you are tohave structured meetings with
this individual.
You have to have weeklyone-on-ones with them.
You've got to go through thework, you've got to take the
(15:59):
time to evaluate it.
You have to give them good,constructive feedback on what
they're doing and give them thetime that they need.
And then you also let them knowthat they should be invited.
That person should be invitedto all your team calls.
Get them added onto thecalendar.
If I'm doing all hands, if thisperson doesn't report to me and
I'm doing an all hands callwith my team, I invite that
individual.
Make them feel welcome.
(16:20):
The hardest part is when you area virtual company, as I
typically am and my teamstypically are.
You need that student to beable to make the connection and
you need to make them feel thatbeing remote is still a
professional job, right?
You can't be in your dorm roomwith you know, your bed unmade,
or roommate coming in and out ofyour dorm room or coming in the
(16:43):
bathroom.
You laugh.
But during the pandemic Iactually had to give etiquette
lessons to our cohort.
Hey guys, I know it's thepandemic, but shirts on no, tank
tops.
Women, your bed needs to bemade.
Your doors should be closed.
I don't want to see what'sgoing on in the hall.
If you're at home or in thedorm and you're working and
(17:04):
you're on a call, have a littlesign made up that says hey, I'm
on a business call, beprofessional.
I laugh.
But I had to teach some basicetiquette because they never had
experiences, they've neverworked remote and it's a
pandemic where everybody issuper casual.
Kevin Kerner (17:19):
Anyway, yeah, and they just may not have the
context of what a real businessis right, so giving them that
advice early on is really supervaluable.
For the mentors, though, dothey need their own set of
training?
Have you seen ways to get themmore engaged?
Do they have to raise theirhand as mentors?
Do they have to want to do itas well?
Cheryl Rodness (17:40):
It's a bit of both.
You never volunteer or I'venever voluntold anybody.
I've typically gone to someoneand said I'd like you to be
so-and-so's mentor, coming in,and they typically don't say no.
But you need to be mindful ofwho you're setting up.
There are people in yourorganization that you know would
be a good mentor, or a buddy,so to speak, and those who might
(18:03):
not necessarily give somebodythe time or whatever doesn't
have the right temperament to doit.
So you've got to match itappropriately and typically
you'll find especially if youfind somebody who's been out of
school for maybe two or threeyears they remember what it was
like coming in and they'll go.
Of course I'll give them thehelp and support they need.
I remember what that was likeand I you know how it can be
(18:25):
scary or intimidating or justunknown and they want to help.
Kevin Kerner (18:30):
Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense and I love
the idea of these checkpointsthat you mentioned along the way
, and even checkpoints with theCXO team.
That's really valuable becauseit gives them face time with the
senior people at the company.
Cheryl Rodness (18:45):
Now you have to prep them.
Kevin Kerner (18:46):
Yeah.
Cheryl Rodness (18:47):
You don't want to send them in blind, so I
would always take the time to gothrough.
What should the conversation becovered?
If you've got the time withthem, what are the kinds of
things that you should be askingthem?
If you're going to preparematerials, let's go through it
ahead of time.
Let's focus on what the keypoints should be, because you
don't want to waste the CXO'stime either, or the head of the
department or whoever.
(19:08):
You need to make sure that thetime is valuable and as seen as
valuable.
Kevin Kerner (19:13):
And me having to meet with HR is really useful
too, because that's anotherdepartment that they're going to
have to could potentially haveto deal with at the company.
So CXO HR super interesting.
So when you get to evaluationand feedback, you mentioned that
it needs to be relativelystructured.
What about hard skills versussoft skills?
Like you might have people thatare really good at their job
(19:33):
but didn't have any soft skills,or vice versa.
Cheryl Rodness (19:36):
That all gets built into the four box.
So if you think about the fourbox, you're looking at skills
and performance, and thatperformance often comes down to
a lot of soft skills, Like werethey able to interact?
How did other people feel aboutthem?
Now, depending as you go tobuild your four box or put your
person in the four box, what alot of us did is sent out
surveys to the people that theyinteracted with.
(19:57):
A very quick survey.
They just got a quick overviewof what was it like to work with
this person Efficient, did theyuse your time well?
Did they ask good questions?
Did they work well with theteam, et cetera.
Whatever the questions are thatyou need to ask, but that gives
you a better sense from theconstituents that they worked
with.
How did they perform?
And then you take that backwith your own feedback and then
(20:17):
the manager puts them in thefour box.
Kevin Kerner (20:19):
Have you ever seen an intern that just blows you
away at a project where you'relike, oh my gosh, this person is
a genius, we have to hire this.
This is amazing.
Cheryl Rodness (20:28):
Yeah, I've hired a couple of my interns.
In fact, I hired one intern whowas the son of a very good
friend.
His qualifications were perfect, exactly what I needed, so it
was the right person and broughthim in for an internship.
What we typically did was theywere brought in for a summer
(20:50):
internship.
If you liked them and they wereperforming well, you would ask
them, or they would ask you.
Do you connect?
Send this through some hoursduring the school year.
Students can always find timefor a few hours and if you liked
them and thought they wereworthwhile, you would say yes.
And then, as they came up tograduation, you kind of started
having conversations Can I hirethem With this individual?
(21:11):
Hired them during the summer,kept them through two semesters,
going back part-time, and thentalked to them about a full-time
job.
And they're there.
It's probably three years later.
Kevin Kerner (21:22):
Yeah, super interesting.
Cheryl Rodness (21:23):
I've done that with a few people.
Kevin Kerner (21:24):
Yeah, I mean that's what we're doing with
Audrey.
This intern is.
She's so good.
We were like, well, we're justgoing to keep her going through
the semester and typically theyoung adult wants the work.
But it's like perfect, becausethey slowly get integrated into
your company to the point wherethey can actually do the work
really well.
Cheryl Rodness (21:40):
And that's the nail on the head.
If you do this properly and youfind that diamond in the rough
and you keep them through theiracademic program, you help them
because what they learn theytake back into their classes and
they have real world examplesand experience.
They make some money, you getsome work done and then by the
time that they're ready to comeout of school they know your
(22:00):
company.
The onboarding and the ramp isreally minimal.
They can become productiveimmediately and they've got a
job and you've got somebodywaiting for you.
Kevin Kerner (22:08):
If you just off top of your head, like the best
interns, what makes them standout, what makes them become,
can't miss hires.
Cheryl Rodness (22:16):
Hunger and aspiration.
They ask for more.
They do what they need to do.
They do it well.
They do it independently.
They come back with ideas.
They're self-sufficient, likethey know what they need to do,
much like they would in school.
They take the understanding ofwhat you need them to do and
they run with it.
And then they have aspirationand such that they think of the
next thing hey, could we bedoing this?
(22:41):
Hey, have you thought aboutthat?
Whether or not it's a good ideaor not doesn't matter.
It's their thinking about whatcan we do?
That's going to help advancethe business goals.
Kevin Kerner (22:46):
How do you measure , or should you measure, the ROI
in some meaningful way for thebusiness?
Cheryl Rodness (22:53):
We always measure it in terms of did the
projects that we laid out to bedone get done, and did that
alleviate the bandwidth ofothers on the team to do other
work that was probably better totheir skill set and they didn't
have the time to do previously?
And that's how we would measureit.
Was the person effective?
(23:13):
Did they get the work done thatwe needed to get done?
Did it allow the other membersof the team to do other work?
Kevin Kerner (23:20):
Paid or free internships.
Cheryl Rodness (23:21):
I don't think it's fair to ask kids to work
for free, would you?
Kevin Kerner (23:25):
I agree, I totally agree, and we're a small
company and I wouldn't askanyone to work for free.
Yeah, it just sort of sets up abad feeling, I guess, between
parties.
Cheryl Rodness (23:36):
It does, and this is a discussion for another
podcast but the loyalty or thecommitment that this generation
coming out of school has towardscompanies is very different
than probably what you and Ihave, kevin.
And so if you're not going totreat them right, why should
they treat you right?
Right, so they'll take moredays off, they'll be less
committed.
I'm not getting paid for thisanyway.
(23:57):
What's it really matter?
Now, some will have a muchharder work ethic and that won't
matter to them.
It's all the experience.
But I just don't feel it's fairto ask people to work and not
pay them for it.
Kevin Kerner (24:09):
Would you hire someone from out of college,
after college high school degreeLike does it matter?
Cheryl Rodness (24:17):
Hiring full-time .
Kevin Kerner (24:19):
No, no, not hire, but intern.
Cheryl Rodness (24:21):
Yeah okay so personal preference versus
what's been done.
My preference, where I havefound the greatest success, is
to hire interns who are at leastsophomores they have.
They're in the second year ofuniversity, they have a little
bit more maturity, a little bitmore discipline, a little bit
more knowledge from the coursesthey've taken and can connect
(24:44):
the dots better.
Having said that, I've hadother interns who were freshmen,
or a couple at a high school.
Again, you have to adjust thework expectation.
Kevin Kerner (24:58):
Really good advice .
Like I wouldn't have thoughtthe sophomore, but I think
you're dead on.
I think that seems about right.
Cheryl Rodness (25:03):
I've had enough experience to tell you that a
sophomore is going to be good, Ajunior is better.
You know sort of a risingsenior is great, but they tend
to also have more choices.
Kevin Kerner (25:16):
And then I had one other sort of fast question for
you, because we find a lot ofgreat talent in Central and
South America.
Global, okay, or should youkeep it local, to the company,
the region that you're in, orwould you hire globally for any
internship?
I mean, what are the nuances?
You've been at some massivecompanies, so I wonder what your
(25:36):
perspective is there.
Cheryl Rodness (25:36):
In terms of region, the interesting thing is
, if you're going to pay them,they actually have to be in a
region where you have an office.
Because of the finance issuesand the legal issues of it all,
I think they have to maybe notso much legal, but financially.
You can't pay them from the USif they're in Central America or
if they're in Japan, or ifthey're in India or somewhere
else.
It's really difficult.
(25:57):
So you want to hire them forthe region in which the work is
being done and the manager islocated.
Time zones matter.
Kevin Kerner (26:07):
Yeah, yeah.
Especially if you're a youngperson and someone's across the
world and you're working daysand their night, it just does
not seem like a great fit.
Great, okay, this is greatadvice.
If I'm a marketing leader thatwants to start building an
internship program tomorrow,where would I start?
What would be the first fewthings you'd start with?
(26:29):
Where would I start?
Cheryl Rodness (26:29):
What would be the first few things you'd start
with Sit down with your teamand understand what work really
needs to get done and can getdone by somebody else
no-transcript and then reallydefine what those jobs are, what
(26:55):
the projects are, what theoutcomes are, the deliverables,
and be realistic of what can bedone within 10, 12 weeks.
I also wouldn't do it in lessthan really 10 weeks.
Kevin Kerner (27:08):
Yeah, good advice.
So 10 weeks, you think, is likethe minimum.
Cheryl Rodness (27:14):
Yeah, we've had people for eight weeks, which
you can do, but again you haveto adjust what can be done
because your first couple ofweeks are going to be them
floundering and finding theirway around.
Kevin Kerner (27:24):
You know it's interesting too for your team.
I hadn't thought of this, butwe preach this a lot at Mighty
and True about building systemsand automation and repeatability
and standard operatingprocedures to scale and you've
been at bigger companies so theyprobably had a lot more scale.
But if you're forcing yourselfto go through the process of
hiring an intern and reallygoing through that, you really
(27:46):
have to have systems that youcan show them to work on things.
You can't just like drop themin and say, hey, figure this,
you can tell them, figure thisout.
But you could tell them figureout how to build a system for
you, which I did with my intern.
But it really gets your companythinking about like, how do we
repeat the things that we do?
Cheryl Rodness (28:03):
Playbooks are really, really important.
We have a ton of them at QuestGlobal, across the marketing
organization.
Every time we do something new,create something new.
We create a playbook of how doyou do this, how do you execute
on this type of program oractivity, or deliverable or
whatever, because you do need topoint people to playbooks.
Kevin Kerner (28:25):
There's a lot of companies that don't have that
same bias.
So if you're a company thatdoesn't have any playbooks and
you're just, it's all done byyou know everyone's sort of
tribal knowledge, it seems likeit'd be a lot harder to have
someone younger in.
Cheryl Rodness (28:39):
But then you can actually ask them to document
and create the playbook for you.
Yeah, yeah, good point, if youdon't have one, you're saying go
ahead and do this, let themdocument what they're doing,
because they're learning it forthe first time and their
documentation will be prettythorough.
Kevin Kerner (28:53):
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the future.
So the future of everythingright now is AI.
How do you think internshipswill evolve as AI reshapes?
Early career work Is there anyeffect that AI has on this stuff
?
Cheryl Rodness (29:07):
Well, again, if we're talking about marketing
for sure, I had a summer internand I had her using AI.
I had her working on copy, onscripts, on PR releases, and I
said to her, I'm going to walkyou through our system, which is
it's an intake, where you sitdown with the expert, the SME,
(29:27):
and ask a series of questionsand get the input.
And then I want you to, so Iwant you to go through that and
understand what an intakesession looks like.
And then you're going to takethe input and you're going to
put it into AI and you're goingto ask it to create a press
release or a script or whateverit was that we were doing.
And then I want you to read it,make sure it makes sense,
massage it and then bring itback to me and we can take a
(29:50):
look at.
You know how we execute on this.
The biggest mistake people makeis that they feed it into AI
and go okay, I'm done now.
Kevin Kerner (29:58):
Yeah.
Cheryl Rodness (29:58):
Oh, if I take out the em dashes, it looks like
I wrote it.
No, they're going to have touse AI.
We all need to use AI.
I think it's a brilliant tool,but I call it first draft.
Ai is a first draft capabilityfrom a marketing standpoint.
It saves time because it allowsyou to get the basics behind
you, but if you don't havesomebody looking at it, reading
(30:21):
it, for readability, for context, for impact, for all the things
that we need, relevant emotivedistinctive makes sense that
it's coming from your company.
The quotes make sense.
Proven emotive distinctivemakes sense that it's coming
from your company.
The quotes make sense.
They're in the tone of voicefrom your people, the tone of
voice of the release, the script, whatever it is, then you're
(30:44):
dead in the water.
Kevin Kerner (30:44):
There's no sense using it.
So it's a great way to startfirst draft.
Yeah, I totally completelyagree.
And what's an amazing scenariofor a young person in an
internship is it seems likeusing AI and with deep research
and things, they can get theinformation so much faster and
they can talk to AI to get whatthey need to get something done,
where before AI it would havebeen a lot of Googling and
(31:05):
research and things they wouldhave had to do on their own.
So it seems like it speeds theoutcome to that first draft for
them.
But I agree, they do needsomeone with some context that
has that can review things.
We had a lot of AI output fromour intern this semester this
summer and it was great.
But you know, having done thisfor close to 40 years now, I'm
(31:27):
like, okay, well, that's itneeds.
It needs a lot of massaging,but isn't it now that, like if
you're a intern, you may be ableto dig into stuff that you
wouldn't have been able to diginto before, just because you
have this amazing coworker tool?
Cheryl Rodness (31:43):
I agree, and I think it gives you exposure to
do things, because AI allows youto get ahead of it.
So if you're not a great writer, it gives you a way to start
and then you can read through itand figure a better way to
massage it.
But I can't stress enough howimportant it is to read what's
coming out of AI.
I'm going to give you anexample.
I was working on an email forsomething, for a project, and it
(32:10):
was going to and it was goingto a potential client and it was
just taking.
I had pulled some informationabout their quarterly earnings
and the email that came backdear so-and-so congratulations
on an amazing quarter.
And I looked at it and wentwait a minute, I don't think
(32:31):
they had an amazing quarter.
When I take a look at thefinancials, well, the amazing
quarter was they went fromlosing like 14, you know
negative 14 the previous quarterto negative six or something
like that this quarter.
You know AI looked at it as anamazing quarter.
I'm like whoa, congratulationson only being down 6%.
So again I caution don't takeAI you know it's a first blush
(32:55):
without so true, it's just sotrue.
Kevin Kerner (32:58):
And I would wonder like, okay, well, fast forward
a couple more years, two, threemore years.
You're going to have whateverGen Z and Gen Alpha in
internships.
They're going to have a wholedifferent like look on working,
I guess than what it is now, butthey're also going to be very
AI native in everything thatthey do.
So it's going to get better.
Cheryl Rodness (33:16):
AI native and social media native.
The social media landscape andthe platforms change so
frequently now.
What was in six months ago isnow out.
What's the new format?
What's the new trend?
If you need somebody who's ontop of that, because, I hate to
say it you and I aren't.
Kevin Kerner (33:32):
Yeah.
Cheryl Rodness (33:32):
Probably not.
Kevin Kerner (33:33):
Yeah, no, no.
I gave Audrey a few things forsocial media and it was so much
better than anything I couldhave done I would have never
thought of how she did.
The other thing I think is goodtoo is field marketing and
events.
I think internships are becauseevents are so logical in how
you put them together.
You got to kind of see aroundthe corners of things.
That can go wrong and a lot cango wrong, but it is a lot of
(33:54):
sort of critical thinking that Ithink is really good for
interns to do.
Cheryl Rodness (33:58):
Yeah, the detail required behind an event is
actually really good for them tounderstand discipline.
The challenge I would say withsome interns is they may not
have necessarily the sense ofstyle or finesse that you may be
looking for, so you always needto kind of look over the
shoulder a little bit.
Kevin Kerner (34:14):
Clearly Well, this has been great.
I mean, I think we've gonethrough just about everything
onboarding, mentorship I'vetaken a ton of notes evaluation,
hiring, roi really good stuff.
I have one last thing I do withmy guests here, which is called
AI Roulette, and it's basicallyI load the questions I was
going to ask in your profileinto Perplexity and then I hit
(34:37):
Go and it gives me a questionand typically the Roulette
questions are the best questionsof all because my questions
suck so bad.
So let me hit Send here andlet's see what it does.
This is interesting.
Okay, it says Under whatcircumstances would you trust AI
to entirely pick your interns?
Cheryl Rodness (34:59):
Circumstances.
I really have to think aboutthis.
I could come up with thereallys.
That's okay.
Kevin Kerner (35:06):
I know what my answer would be.
Cheryl Rodness (35:10):
Planning a three-year-old birthday party?
Yeah right.
Kevin Kerner (35:14):
Yeah, if you were just doing the bare minimum,
that would be it.
Cheryl Rodness (35:20):
I don't know.
I don't know what I would trustAI to do 100% From a work
perspective, nothing From apersonal perspective.
They can plan a dinner partyand recipes for me.
Kevin Kerner (35:31):
That is dead on.
That's exactly what I wasthinking.
I was like not much, I wouldmaybe manage my calendar, I
guess.
And that just shows you theconfidence we have in AI right.
Cheryl Rodness (35:43):
Exactly, yeah, they can plan my dinner.
If dinner's no good, I can tossit out.
Kevin Kerner (35:46):
Yeah right.
Cheryl Rodness (35:47):
No harm, no foul .
Kevin Kerner (35:48):
Good question, perplexity.
But no, we would not, we're notgoing to trust it.
You know, I saw something today.
I was just reading about howcandidates don't trust that AI
can pick them as the rightcandidate.
So all these young collegegraduates there's a bunch of AI
systems that are now trying topick them as a candidate.
They're sifting through all theresumes that companies get.
(36:09):
Like 60 or 70% don't believethe AI is picking them right,
but get.
And like 60 or 70% don'tbelieve the AI is picking them
right, but at the same time,like almost 60 to 70%, are using
AI to write their resumes andcover letters and all those
things.
It's kind of like the battle ofthe two AIs when it comes to
hiring these days.
Cheryl Rodness (36:27):
I would agree.
I think HR in many cases not inall rely too much on AI to sift
through resumes because they'reputting in keywords and they
could be missing lots ofkeywords.
I also know of students who arewriting multiple resumes and
sending them through to acompany to see which word gets
picked up.
So I don't know if that's justa waste of time and overflow
(36:48):
into an inbox for resumes, to beperfectly honest, and there's
nothing.
When you're hiring somebody,you have to talk to them, you
have to get a sense of who theyare.
I don't think you can siftthrough by looking at keywords.
You're going to miss people.
You're going to miss apotential diamond in the rough
(37:08):
or a real jewel because theirkeywords didn't match.
Kevin Kerner (37:12):
It's also forcing a lot more in-person interviews
too, cause you have, and youknow, if the person's not remote
or if you're not remote, you'reactually want to meet the
person, cause there's just somuch, so much out there.
That's pretty crazy.
This is really great.
My next internship.
I have a lot of work to do tomake it, to make it better.
Cheryl Rodness (37:30):
I can help you.
Kevin Kerner (37:31):
Yeah, yeah, I will definitely be calling you in
the spring next year, becausewe'll do it again.
It was a great experience.
It's just so fun to see theseyoung people.
Okay, spring is too late.
Cheryl Rodness (37:41):
That's the other thing, yep.
So if you want your pick ofstudents, you should have your
resumes up and ready to go byDecember.
Kevin Kerner (37:49):
Yeah, I guess you're right.
Students are already well intolooking in January.
Cheryl Rodness (37:52):
Yeah, if you're waiting till April or May.
I hate to say it, but you'regetting people who haven't been
able to get an internship orwere too late and too lazy to
start looking early, or havebeen turned down by other places
.
Not that I mean to generalizeto students, but I have found
that when you wait too late,you're not necessarily getting
your choice.
Kevin Kerner (38:12):
Yeah, that's a good ending advice.
Really good stuff.
Cheryl, this has been amazing.
I know people want to reach outto you and talk to you some of
this stuff and I know you'realso very busy at Quest too, on
the brand side, but how canpeople reach you if they want to
get ahold of you to talk to youabout any of your knowledge
around internships?
Cheryl Rodness (38:30):
You can find me on LinkedIn.
It's Cheryl Rodness.
You can certainly reach out tome at Cheryl Rodness at
quest-globalcom, I'm easy tofind.
Kevin Kerner (38:39):
Cool, I'll link you.
Cheryl Rodness (38:40):
I'm happy to talk to people about this.
I love this topic.
Kevin Kerner (38:42):
Yeah, I know You're great.
You've always been a great sortof teacher and mentor for me,
so I do appreciate ourfriendship.
Cheryl Rodness (38:55):
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast here
and putting up with me and Ihope to see you again soon.
Thanks, kevin, it was apleasure, a lot of fun.
Okay, I'll see you, take care.
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