Ten simple rules for successfully hosting an intern at a scientific software company

Internships are increasingly popular choices for motivated students looking to enhance their skills, explore various employers, and get a head start on finding full-time employment. Although there are a few Ten Simple Rules articles from the intern’s [1,2] and mentor’s [3] perspectives, there are none written from the employer’s. We’d like to share what we’ve learned over the years. We work for a scientific software company, focusing on writing data pipelining software for our computational biology customers, primarily in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Although we are informed by our specific experience, many of the following rules could be applied to internships in other fields, as well as academia. In general, we believe that these rules also apply to startup companies. The biggest difference one of us has experienced is that there may not be the luxury of having enough time to spend preparing tasks and working with interns. And all tasks may be on the critical path.