The December issue of the Harvard Business Review has a short article, Bringing the College Inside, on Porsche's use of university Masters students as a key part of their R&D. Some details: Porsche has 2000 full-time R&D personnel and they bring in 600 students a year who work for 4 to 6 months at a cost of approximately $50,000 per student.
HBR highlights the following tips to be learned from Porsche's approach (italicized words are HBR's, the comments that follow are my own):
- Value creation and passion over grades. This isn't necessarily good advice for hiring full-time people (assuming that grades equals quality). I typically hire for the best quality people rather than those who happen to have the knowledge of a specific area for a job. If the students are only there for 4-6 months, though, I can see how the best work will be obtained by those who have the most enthusiasm towards the projects assigned.
- Use the Web. Internet tools are used to recruit and select students. I assume that this is optimal due to the large number of applicants that apply for positions.
- Treat interns like employees. Reasonable advice. I'd like to see this applied to law firm summer interns.
- Focus on communication and presentation. Porsche has the students give presentations on their work across the company to rapidly disseminate their results. How about using blogs or wikis for this instead? Surprisingly, Porsche recommends, "emphasizing strong visuals rather than detailed written reports." Edward Tufte wouldn't be too happy to hear that.
- Deploy students in any activities that add value. Reasonable.
- Build loyalty. In other words, don't treat students like cheap labor. I suggest that loyalty creation should be a part of almost all aspects of a business.
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