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Feedback and Evaluation for Interns
Tech interns often bring new ideas and up-to-date knowledge from school. But at the same time, they are just beginning their professional journey with little or no real-world work experience. So feedback and performance evaluations are crucial throughout tech internships to help interns build essential skills and grow into capable professionals.
Here, you’ll learn how to give feedback to interns and build effective evaluation programs. You’ll also see how partnering with Miami Tech Works helps you develop impactful internship opportunities that benefit both your organization and aspiring tech professionals.
Feedback supports three key areas of an intern development plan:
Feedback takes many forms, and not all of them promote growth. For an intern performance evaluation to be effective, feedback must be constructive and it should be given as soon as possible, when the intern still has a chance to apply recommendations from supervisors. By taking these steps, employers can reduce any misunderstandings about expectations while helping interns learn their responsibilities more quickly.
Constructive criticism is clear, specific, and solution-oriented. It shows what needs improvement and provides steps someone can take to fix the problem. The goal with constructive criticism is to help interns improve without getting personal.
General criticism, on the other hand, is vague and broad. It focuses on what went wrong without necessarily providing actionable guidance.
Criticism can be tough to hear, even when it’s meant to help. For interns to take honest feedback without feeling attacked or getting defensive, they need to feel supported. That support starts with managers creating an environment where interns are encouraged to grow, not judged, from the first day.
Normalizing feedback is one way of creating a supportive environment. If you reserve feedback for special occasions, such as an intern performance review or when something has gone wrong, it will never really be an organic part of your company’s culture. When people expect regular constructive criticism from the very first day of a tech internship, feedback feels less like a personal attack and more like a part of the process.
Another way to build a growth-friendly environment is to give positive feedback often. If you constantly criticize performance and never praise good work, you risk hurting interns’ morale, self-confidence, and development. Best practices for giving positive feedback include:
Performance reviews show interns how they’re doing and where they can grow. However, not all evaluation programs are successful.
Here are some steps to design an effective performance review for internships:
What are interns’ responsibilities, and how can they perform them to meet quality standards? What do you expect regarding communication, punctuality, responsiveness, teamwork, and other professional qualities?
When setting expectations, remember that interns are not full-time employees. Expectations should match their experience level and time.
The metrics you use to measure intern performance depend on the expectations you set for them. Common KPIs include:
The KPIs should correlate directly to internship goals.
Cumulative evaluations that only happen at the end of the internship miss opportunities to promote intern growth during the experience. Weekly one-on-one meetings between a manager (or supervisor) and the intern are more effective than a one-time review. Ongoing feedback helps interns recognize:
You can use a performance management system if you don’t want to document and monitor intern performance manually. This system allows you to set task objectives, track completion, and automatically generate performance reports. It also supports 360 evaluations by enabling self-assessments, peer reviews, and behavioral assessments, which gives you a holistic view of an intern’s performance.
When you document performance, you create a clear record of intern progress to use in evaluation meetings. It also makes writing detailed performance reviews at the end of tech internships easier. Then you can use those reviews to identify top talent or to write reference letters and suggest next steps for interns.
Here is an example of an intern evaluation template you can use to record and track performance.
Wondering how to help interns overcome obstacles throughout the internship? Here are some best practices:
If you want interns to finish on a high note, there are several things you can do:
With organizations fighting for top tech talent, a steady flow of qualified people from your internship program can give you a long-term competitive edge. Miami Tech Works helps you achieve that.
We connect organizations with motivated and skilled interns who are looking to apply their knowledge and make an impact on real-world projects. We also help companies create and fund effective internship programs.
Learn more about Miami Tech Works and how it helps employers in South Florida create a sustainable pool of tech talent.
