Student clubs and student-run organizations range widely in scope and mission, but one issue each inevitably deals with is that of turnover from semester to semester (or quarter to quarter). With the end of each semester, some members graduate, other elect to try a new organization, and a few will reorganize their lives to include different responsibilities and experiences. In coping with this issue of turnover, there are a few steps you can take to ensure your club continues to function efficiently, can achieve its goals, and fulfill its purpose.

1.) Introduce an internship program - When I started on my path to becoming General Manager of my student group, I spent an entire year as an intern to my predecessor. While the value in terms of training and exposure are inherent and paramount, another experience this provided me with was the opportunity to really identify and align with the club’s culture. It’s one thing to have ideas and plans for improving a club’s performance, but it’s an entirely different thing to be able to execute these ideas effectively given the club’s strengths and opportunities as defined by its culture. For instance, if your club has a culture marked by autonomy, if you come in and try to apply wide-spread changes  to how the group is managed by forcing more group decision-making, you’ll likely be met with unrest (and potential turnover). If you can come from a place of understanding and respect for the status quo, you’re more likely to hold onto your key members, and one way of gaining this insight into your club is by giving yourself the time to do so as an intern. You can always start in on changing a culture after you’ve established credibility and trust within your group.

2.) Plan end-of-semester “celebrations” - Turnover can stem from a number of different reasons, but one reason I consistently saw during my time with my club is a lack of engagement and connection with the group. By holding an end-of-semester “celebration,” you give yourself a wonderful opportunity to bring everyone together, celebrate the recent successes of the club, and start to plan for the future. Not only do you connect with members based off recognition, but you give some of those members who might be on-the-fence for the next semester a glimpse into what the future holds and how they can be a part of it. Members rarely want to be stagnant in their roles, so use this as a forum to help them realize what else they can contribute to the group moving forward.

3.) Ask for member referrals - No matter how strongly connected everyone is in the club, people are going to leave, and one of the best ways to fill the voids left is by their recommendation. If someone did a great job for the club, chances are they know someone with similar taste, style, and interests that can do a comparable job. Not only do you save yourself the time (and potential inaccuracy) of having to hire someone based off fleeting knowledge acquired during a brief interview, but you build an element of community into your club’s culture. You’re messaging to your members that you trust their opinions and value the relationships they’ve established with other club members. Even further, with a referral candidate, he/she will be able to utilize their predecessor as a mentor, either formally or informally.

Every club is in a unique environment and deals with unique problems, but turnover affects all, and if you can minimize the detrimental effect it can have on your club, you’ll be able to focus your efforts on more important and pertinent issues. These are just a few suggestions for establishing a community-based culture, minimizing time spent on hiring and training, and avoiding alienating members with radical, uninformed changes.

I mean, just because I’m not on a definite path toward being an architect or a congressman or an orangutan trainer doesn’t mean I’m not interested in anything. On the contrary, actually. My college resume is a veritable potpourri of potential professions. All three of my college internships were tied to personal interests (non-profits, travel, music). I majored in Economics and Creative Writing. I pledged a fraternity, and worked for the Geography Department one summer.  And now I’m feeding my interests again, picking a summer internship at a tech startup in Silicon Valley over other full-time job offers.

People ask me all the time, with genuine concern in their faces: “Aren’t you worried about what happens at the end of the summer?” The honest answer is no. If I have to sacrifice my interests for the sake of long-term financial security at the age of 21, then in the words of Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth: “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.” Plus, I have every bit of confidence in WePay, both because of the people I work with and because of the concept. My coworkers are all kinds of awesome, but it was the idea that originally drew me to this company. People overlap each other in new ways every day, especially financially, and a tool that helps people balance themselves against one another – that lets people easily move money online – it isn’t just valuable. It’s necessary. At least in my opinion.

Necessary or not, though, at this particular stop (and all the other ones) along my little as-yet-unresolved journey towards a permanent career, I’ve picked up a few pieces of wisdom for my fellow interns out there – the ones taking the more organic approach to adulthood:

1.     Understand how people see your generation

There’s a Youtube clip out there [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lmR_357rA] of a few anchors on Fox News talking about how Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood has ruined a generation of young people who now feel special. Entitlement, I’m afraid, is the knock on our generation. I’m not here to debate whether or not it’s true. How do you objectively measure something like that? I can guarantee, though, that you will run into people at work who feel that it is very true – that we are shallow and self-serving. I’ve been fired for it (“Your generation needs to learn that you do not give ultimatums to a superior”), and I’ve heard it muttered (“F&%$*@ kids these days”), but basically, your job is to prove these people wrong. It doesn’t take much. Show that you are genuinely interested and engaged by the people around you. Learn how to be competent. Make your co-workers trust you, and make them look good.

2.     Take advantage of your generation’s gifts

Start with what our generation does better than any other. We are the first wave of people raised on the Internet. We stay connected. We rely on other people – on collaboration, on technology. We understand our constant access to infinite information, and we adjust ourselves accordingly. Compared to those for whom the Internet is a struggle, we have the opportunity to be exponentially more productive in a fraction of the time. We are literate in the ways that technology can supplement our natural skills. Software-as-a-service is blooming, with seemingly unlimited potential for those with a desire to be competent. My advice is to utilize the applications that best organize your mind, the ones that help you develop methods and routines that feel comfortable. When it comes to documents, I’m a Google Apps kind of guy. Others prefer Dropbox or MobileMe. Everyone our age should be able to find the answer to any basic question within a minute. Google and Wikipedia should be second nature. After all, part of the reason we’re seen as entitled is because we have access to a whole array of shortcuts that have never existed before. Use them to your advantage.

3.     Appreciate that there’s a reason for professionalism

I’ve worked at an internship where everybody in the office ironed their pants every morning, and I’ve worked with people in flip-flops. Neither one is naturally better than the other. You have to understand that each place you work has its own corporate culture of sorts, and in order to do well there, you have to adjust yourself to fit it. If people are going to spend 9 hours of each day cramped together, they have to find ways to stay sane. Some bosses hand out beers at five, and some require their employees to wear a certain color of tie. If you want peoples’ respect, you have to give in to it. That’s what professionalism is, basically: a code of behavior that greases the wheels, that keeps everyone out of each other’s way. You shouldn’t feel like the code is a burden. If it starts to feel like you’re wearing a mask to work every day, don’t be afraid to question if the job is a good fit for you.

4.     Enjoy the people you work with

This is the single most underrated aspect of career decisions. Granted, it’s very difficult to know what the person hiring you will turn out to be like, but internships come in handy here. They give you a taste of what kind of people get drawn to what kind of careers. I remember sitting around in the tutoring center I worked at, looking up at the other tutors – the volunteers and my coworkers – and thinking to myself how honorably they chose to spend their time. These were people I did not mind associating with. I got the same feeling working with the culturally plugged-in people at a PR agency and here, working with the brilliant minds at a startup. The fact is, even with the mask of professionalism, your co-workers rub off on you. You can’t avoid them. If you hate who you work with, it can be tough to convince yourself that what you are doing is worthwhile, even if you would normally enjoy it.

That last piece of advice is especially applicable for startups. In this environment, with this kind of energy, it can be hard to tell where the company ends and the people begin. As is true with a lot of startup companies, the people at WePay have generally invested a great deal of themselves in the quest to make it work, and their effort is always apparent. Here, it would be almost impossible to like the work you do (the sales calls, the product meetings, the programming assignments, the marketing strategies) unless you also liked the people you worked with.

I have more to say on this, so stay tuned for updates throughout the summer, and ask me for a demo of WePay!

I just read WePay’s latest blog post about interning for a startup when you’re young, inexperienced, and non-technical. The post said that you should “be persistent, network your way in and demand a job….[and] demonstrate a deep knowledge of and passion for the product.”  I think my experiences may add a little color to this advice.

I’m the president of the Entrepreneurial Society (ES) at San Jose State University. I’m also a junior majoring in finance, and will graduate in Spring 2011, hopefully with high honors. I joined the Entrepreneurial Society at SJSU because it introduces business students to non-traditional career opportunities.

Instead of helping students land stale accounting or finance jobs, ES works with entrepreneurs and angels in the Valley to help students formulate their ideas, build business plans, and compete in events like The Neat Ideas Fair & The Business Plan Competition.

My goal as president has been to build previously non-existent ties between the College of Engineering and the College of Business at SJSU, so students can build relationships and leverage complimentary skill sets. Business students need to understand and appreciate the value of engineers, especially at early-stage startups. WePay has a 5:1 ratio of engineers to non-engineers.  My goal is to establish at least a 1:1 ratio in the Entrepreneurial Society. In addition, I am in the process of planning ES Tech Trek, which will include an in-depth visit to 5 startups and VC firms next fall.  I think it’s important for students to learn about entrepreneurship in the field, in addition to in the classroom.

About a month ago, Rich started reaching out to local student clubs and organizations to better understand how they manage group finances.  Since I was one of the people he contacted, I asked if he wanted to grab lunch; I wanted to better understand how WePay could help ES, but I also wanted to start building relationships with startup founders in the area.

Around the same time, one of my entrepreneurship courses at SJSU had begun bringing in startups to pitch their ideas to students. The class also required students to intern for a funded startup to get the kind of immersive experience that one can’t get from a classroom. I connected Rich with my professor because I wanted WePay to participate in the program.  Now a few weeks later, I’m writing this post from within a sunny office in downtown Palo Alto.  There’s a big WePay sign on the wall across from where I am sitting, and I’m two weeks into one of the most exciting internships I have had. I plan to write a future post about my roles and responsibilities here, and what I hope to accomplish during my time at WePay.

Give WePay a try, it’s free to sign-up!

We are aggressively hiring engineers, so if an engineer reaches out to us, it’s a pretty straightforward process.  Are you a Cultural fit? Technical fit?  If yes to both, then we probably want to hire you.

Since we are not currently hiring non-engineers, the process is not so straightforward when non-technical candidates reach out to us looking for jobs.

For starters, if you’re non-technical and inexperienced, you’re fighting an uphill battle, since you’re looking to fill a position that doesn’t exist.  One way to get around this is to ask for an internship.   For one, it’s easier to get an internship than it is to get a full time job.  This is probably pretty obvious, but it’s definitely worth noting.

I intentionally let potential interns fall through the cracks all the time. I don’t really want to spend time interviewing and hiring them, and I know that once I do, it’s just going to take up even more of my time. New hires (interns especially) require training and direction.   More often than not, the amount of effort I put in to training and directing an intern is less than the amount of tangible value I get out of the relationship.  The other option is for me to put in no effort, and hope that you can figure it out on your own.  I have rarely been pleasantly surprised by this approach.

So how do you get an internship with a startup that’s not looking to hire interns? Be persistent, network your way in and demand a job. Offer to do a trial period. If you’re super inexperienced, volunteer to work unpaid.  It also helps if you can demonstrate a deep knowledge and passion for our product.

Most importantly, know how to answer the following question: “What do you want to do if I hire you.”  I’m too lazy (or too busy) to answer this question for you. And if you can’t answer it before I hire you, that means that I have to take the time trying to figure it out after I hire you. That’s a pretty big deterrent.

The following answers send red flags: “I’ll do anything you want me to” or “I like everything” or “I’m not sure.”  This tells me that I’m going to spend more time trying to think of tasks to give you, than you’re going to spend actually accomplishing them.

A better answer would be: “I can help you accomplish X because I am good at Y”. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for me to see where you fit in the value chain. Do you have a deep knowledge of our target market? Can you do customer service? Can you make pretty graphics? Edit videos? Everybody can think of something they are good at; all you have to do is figure out how that relates to some aspect of what we do on a daily basis.  Remember that most startups only do two things: they build a product and they get people to use it. If you’re not technical, then you just need to make the case that you’ll somehow contribute to the latter.

If you’re an intern, you better be 80% doer and 20% thinker.  The worst thing you can say is something like this: “I am a management major, so I can help you create a plan and define your goals”. I would much rather hear something as simple as: “I will help you get more users.”

If you can finagle an internship, then you just have to kick ass while you’re there. How do you kick ass while you’re there? Pretty simple: accomplish something tangible.  Get customers. Own a project or role (company blog, customer service, community outreach, etc.). Get press.  It doesn’t really matter: as long as at the end of your internship, I feel like we would suffer a major set back if we let you get away. If that’s the case, then we would be crazy not to offer you a job.

Check out the progress of our start-up. WePay is free to sign-up.

I’ll eventually write a post about what startups look for when we interview potential interns, but for now I’m just going to tell the story about how we discovered and hired our first (unpaid) intern, and how we converted him into our second full time (paid) employee.

About six months after Bill and I founded WePay, we were invited to attend Olin College’s Meet the Startups Day.  Olin College is basically a school of 300 or so brilliant hacker-types (Olin actually offered full tuition scholarships to every undergraduate in attendance… until the economy crapped the bed).

Meet the Startups Day is a career fair for Olin students interested in working for startups.  Bill and I were pretty excited to attend because at that point we had not made much progress actually building our product, and although Bill is technically oriented, we needed all the horsepower we could get.  Luckily, we had the arrogance and naiveté to think we had something to offer in return.

So we show up with a laptop and a bunch of business cards. We used the laptop to loop a screen cast of our “prototype” (which, in retrospect, was a piece of crap), and we used our business cards to look, well, business-like.

The business cards didn’t do the trick; every other company had a pretty impressive exhibit, and the people representing those companies looked far less…childlike.

We attracted the fewest number of students, but the students we did attract were particularly enthusiastic.  I think there was a small group of students that genuinely wanted to work for an early-stage startup, and they knew exactly what that entailed.

Olin gave every company that participated in the event a USB stick that contained the resumes of all the students in attendance.  Now that I think about it, that was pretty ingenious…

Three months later, when we were accepted into YCombinator, I looked through the resumes and found Karl Schults, the one name that I remembered from Meet the Startups Day.   Karl was pretty young and earnest, but he was also crazy smart (as far as I could tell).

I gave Karl a call and I said: “Hey Karl, you might not remember me, but I was at Meet the Startups a few months ago. We just got accepted to YC, and we’re about to move out to Silicon Valley. Do you want to intern for us? We can’t pay you, but we’ll buy your plane ticket, give you a place to stay, pay for your food, and provide you with a great experience.”

Karl definitely had the choice to take a paid internship (and if he didn’t, Google and Facebook dropped the ball).  He decided to work unpaid for WePay because he knew he would have the opportunity to write production code and own large parts of the application.

Before the summer, Karl’s only experience with php was a 2 week project in one of his programming classes at school. By the time the summer was over, he was a pro, and had committed as many lines of production code as anybody else. He worked long hours with the rest of us, and his programming skills improved dramatically.

When the summer ended, Karl went back to school… for one semester.  Immediately after we closed our first round, we made Karl an offer. He became our first post-financing hire.  He postponed school, and he now works with us full time in Palo Alto.

Lessons learned:

1. If Karl hadn’t started networking with startups early, we never would have found him (and he never would have found us).
2. If Karl hadn’t made a solid impression, and found a way to keep his name in the back of my mind (USB stick….brilliant), I wouldn’t have even thought to reach out to him again.  A monthly “lets-keep-in-touch” email would probably accomplish the same thing.
3. Karl could have taken a paid internship at a big company. His resume would get a boost, and he would have gotten a ton of “awesome” experience doing QA, writing documentation, and playing Farmville.  Taking an unpaid internship is a bit like early-stage investing: you risk your resources now in the hopes that it pays off in the future. The amount you invest is equivalent to the opportunity cost of working there. Karl bet on us early, and it turned out to be a good choice.
4. Karl crushed it over the summer. Bill and I never questioned whether we should hire him. It was an obvious decision: once we raise money, we’ll hire him full-time.

Give WePay a try today. It’s free to sign up!