Millennials, Internships and Government

Last week, Governing's Public Workforce newsletter writer, Heather Kerrigan, and I were throwing around some potential story ideas to cover this summer. One topic that always gets brought up is millennials in the public workforce: Why do they work in local government? What do they enjoy about their job? What are their struggles? What skills did they have to learn in order to work successfully with more experienced colleagues?

Before we can ask these questions, there is a bigger one to ask: How do millennials learn about and explore jobs in the public sector? One possibility is that he or she completed an internship. And with summer (internship season) rapidly approaching for college and grad students, we want to know what being an intern at the state or local level entails.

Is your office hiring summer interns? What departments do you hire for? What sorts of tasks do interns do in your office and how are they managed? Do you hire back your best interns when they graduate?

If you're willing to share your office's internship program details, please e-mail me at ttrenkner@governing.com. We may share your program in a future Public Workforce e-newsletter.

Story Behind the Story appears every Tuesday.