Experience required are the two most dreaded words by recent graduates yearning to become our next generation of emergency managers. Despite their drive, focus, passion and years of education, many young professionals remain ill-quipped to launch their careers because they lack the unattainable real-world experience.
Several students and graduates have overcome this predicament through the highly competitive and prestigious Emergency Management Internship Program offered by the Los Angeles Emergency Management Department (EMD). Since its inception in early 2009, 15 master’s degree students, Ph.D. candidates, select undergraduates and mid-career professionals have participated in the internship program, gaining highly coveted hands-on experience in emergency management.
The internship program was inspired by an organizational commitment to developing the “new emergency manager.” Since its inception, it’s never been a challenge finding good-quality interns. Through our network of Los Angeles area universities via the Emergency Management University Consortium and national emergency management job boards, we have a mechanism to reach eager students. In fact, each year more than 60 applicants applied for each open position.
Components of Success
The bona fide challenge was whether we could generate an opportunity that would be intriguing, challenging and substantive enough to capture the attention of Generation Y and Millennials, especially for an unpaid position. Through this pursuit, we deciphered three critical components for a successful internship program.
The first component was cultivating a sense of belonging with both their intern cohort and the EMD to compel interns to fully dedicate themselves and strive for excellence.
Second was creating a sense of ownership through making the internships project-based, allowing interns to manage a meaningful and significant project from initiation to completion. We also established a ground rule that trivial administrative tasks would not be relegated to the interns.
The third component was constructing the internship so that it’s as much about the intern as it is about the department. Facilitating networking opportunities, providing interns with training and coaching them on their professional skills created a positive feedback loop, which could be correlated directly to their evolving and enhanced abilities.
Our most senior intern, Jenny Novak, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California who started at the EMD in June 2009, is a testament to the program’s success. “The EMD internship is different than any other internship experience I’ve had because it is project based,” she said. “I feel like I’m a critical member of the EMD team since people are depending on me to lead important projects with real deadlines.”
EMD General Manager Jim Featherstone whole-heartedly endorses the internship program and provides the executive-level backing that’s vital for its success. Featherstone personally identifies and assigns each intern’s projects based on his or her individual skill sets and interests, and with the department’s priorities. Under the guidance of a veteran emergency preparedness coordinator, interns have completed or supported 24 projects for the department, including 13 emergency planning projects; three GIS-based mapping and analysis projects; three capability-enhancing projects; two community preparedness projects; two website development projects; and one emergency response project.
“As a mid-career changer, getting the type of experience that is profoundly relevant and significant to the field is so important,” said Bo Kim, a former intern and recent graduate in emergency management from the Metropolitan College of New York. “You can’t get that only from classroom learning. You learn the basic foundations of emergency management in classrooms, but to develop and grow professionally, you need to supplement your education with hands-on experience. Working at EMD gave me that much-needed boost.”
Interns also receive project management training by learning how to visualize a project from start to finish, identify the objectives and major milestones, and define each objective with specific tasks. They practice time management by creating timelines associated with every task to effectively project realistic deadlines, which is critical for the department.
While interns meet with their project mentors at least once a week, we also meet as a cohort on a monthly basis. Meetings are divided into three parts: project updates, a lesson in leadership or a tour of a city facility and an intern-led presentation or discussion. Interns bring an updated project plan and start the meeting with a status summary. They talk through the issues that may have caused a delay or the effective strategy that has accelerated their project. Each intern has the opportunity to share his or her best practices to help colleagues improve their project management skills.
Institutional Memory
I frequently present on one of John C. Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, which involves a discussion and a short activity, and culminates with a goal-setting exercise. On occasion, I elect to substitute the leadership presentation for a tour of a city facility like the Los Angeles Fire Department dispatch center to give the interns a firsthand look at the inner workings of government. Finally an intern presents on a topic he or she chooses and leads a discussion with a cohort. Topics have included federal emergency management guidance, a recent catastrophic incident and a local professional association that provides networking opportunities, to name a few. Clearly some of the interns’ best learning experiences come from each other.
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