Enjablog

Intern01 –
Pros:
+ Does work.
Cons:
- Loud (voice/demeaner, sucking on fingers after eating, cracking knuckles, picking at hangnails, listening to music on headphones that I can hear while I have my headphones in, talking to himself incessantly at a conversational volume; people can hear him laughing 5 offices away).
- Hides his ignorance by answering questions with buzz words, repeating what you just said, or just offering useless information (e.g. Where did you get this value from? “It says 8 meters.” Thanks, that totally answered the question…).
- Overly confident. Declared his calculations to be correct (2 years of college, 2 weeks interning), explaining “this calculation is kinda weird,” when our resident expert (30+ years experience) says he estimated something different — offering a quantifiable solution.

Summary: So, he’s mostly loud, but I think I just don’t like him.

Intern02 –
Pros:
+ Seems likeable.
+ Quiet.
Cons:
- Does not seem intelligent; slow — intellectually and when completing tasks. Spends days working on something only to find he has no idea what he’s doing. Now, I’ll grant you, that’s what interns do. But I explained the task on Day 0, came back each following day to ask if he was making progress or had any questions, re-explaining the steps at least once a day.

Day 3, he sends me his first attempt which includes almost every error I cited on Day 0 that would need to be changed or the results would come out wrong. It almost seemed like he was listening. Almost. His email included, “I am getting big discrepancies in between the two, but if I have done something wrong I can’t figure out where.”

After receiving comments, trying again, he returns a few hours later saying he didn’t understand Step 1 (how to read a graph). I guess at least he asked. So, I’ll add that as a pro:
+ Willing to ask questions, regardless of their reflection on him.

- Additional points against him for doing his parts wrong on our team project and submitting his sections of the report 3 days late though. I’m not a forgiving person.

Summary: Not annoying, but I just don’t like working with him.

Winner? “Winner.” I dunno. 01 seems like a bad listener, so even though he works, I don’t trust the results nor do I care to work with him to correct his work. 02 is consistently incorrect, so I can at least trust that I should do the task myself and can then do a better job correcting what he’s done. Ok, I’m surprised by this, but I’m voting for Intern02 because I am actually willing to work with him.