Who Is Responsible for Intern Failure?

It was late Friday afternoon, and I was winding down for the weekend when I received a text from a highly respected colleague.

It read, “Please call me as soon as possible. It’s about the interns.” Since she is one of the calmest, least alarmist people I know, I suspected this was a big deal. And it was.

She had taken a group of Council Foundation interns to a Council program that was intended to give them the opportunity to observe professionals in a business environment and to gain exposure to real-world client and team interactions. Participation was encouraged, but the feedback my colleague received about our interns was less than stellar. Too much time on their phones, lack of engagement, tardiness, and missed opportunities to participate were just a few of the concerns on a surprisingly long list.

My initial reaction was outrage. How could they squander such an incredible opportunity? But in speaking with the interns the next day, I was struck that they had no idea that organizers had reacted negatively to their behavior. In that moment, I asked myself a different question: how can you know you’re sitting in a career-defining room if you’ve never been in one before?

I expected them to see a global marketplace, centuries of innovation, extraordinary career opportunities, and the center of specialty insurance. They saw long presentations, industry jargon, people they didn’t know, and topics they didn’t understand. The uncomfortable truth hit me: this wasn’t just their failure; it was ours, too.

We gave them exposure without providing context. We opened the door but failed to explain what was on the other side. When you look at it that way, it becomes clear that interns and the organization investing in them share responsibility for their success or failure. We should have better prepared them for the experience with background information and other data points to help familiarize them with the subject matter ahead of time, along with a clearer explanation of what they would be observing.

Every year, firms across the insurance brokerage industry welcome a new class of interns chosen because they show promise. Yet, at the end of the summer, many of those same interns walk out the door and never come back—not because the industry failed to interest them, but because it failed to prepare them for the experience.

When that happens, we say the fit wasn’t quite right. We conclude that the candidate lacked initiative or appeared disengaged. Then we move on to the next year’s class. But what if we reframe the conversation? Here is the question I keep coming back to: if a talented young person fails to maximize the opportunity we place in front of them, is that solely their responsibility? I keep returning to the same answer: no.

What We Ask Of Interns

We ask interns to navigate an industry with its own vocabulary, unwritten rules, and culture, often within days of arrival. We expect them to build relationships with people they’ve never met, in environments they’ve never experienced, doing work they’ve never been trained to do. We hand them a badge and a desk and assume their potential will take care of the rest.

Some interns figure it out. They’re curious, connected, and confident enough to ask questions and push through the discomfort of not knowing. They get the job offer, and we celebrate them as proof that the system works. But did they succeed because they were more talented, or did they arrive with advantages we didn’t provide to everyone?

Perhaps they were exposed to professional environments before. Perhaps they had parents, mentors, teachers, or coaches who taught them how to network, ask thoughtful questions, seek feedback, and make themselves memorable. If that’s the case, and often it is, then we haven’t built a meritocracy. We’ve built a system that rewards preparation we never provided. It’s time to rethink that approach.

The Invitation Comes With Obligations

When we recruit a young person into this industry, we are implicitly making a promise that the experience will provide a genuine window into this work, why it matters, and whether they might want to build a career doing it.

That promise comes with responsibility. It means providing them with the industry basics before they walk through the door—what a broker does, the language of risk. Not because we expect them to arrive as experts, but because we shouldn’t expect them to decode the industry on their own while simultaneously trying to impress us.

It means telling them explicitly that questions are welcome, that curiosity is not a sign of weakness, that the senior leaders around them would genuinely enjoy being asked about their careers. It means giving feedback early enough to matter. Not a final-week evaluation, but real-time guidance that provides an intern the opportunity to adjust, improve, and grow. An intern who receives honest feedback in week three is a different person by week eight. An intern who receives it in week 10 learns only that they should have done something differently.

Many firms are working hard to address this challenge. Internship programs are more structured than they were a decade ago, mentorship opportunities are becoming more common, and there is a growing recognition that talent development requires intentional investment. But results suggest we still have room to improve, and the quality of the intern experience can still vary significantly by firm or even by manager.

If talented young people leave at the end of every summer without a clear understanding of what this industry offers, without new skills, without a mentor relationship worth maintaining, and without a compelling reason to return, that is not evidence of a generation that lacks work ethic. It is evidence of an industry that has more work to do. (Which is not to say that interns bear no responsibility for their own career development.)

The Council Foundation exists, in part, to help correct that imbalance. Through the newly refreshed Intro to Insurance curriculum, its accompanying Manager’s Guide, and our new apprenticeship program, we are building infrastructure that doesn’t leave preparation to chance. These tools provide foundational industry knowledge, structured learning experiences, and other resources to help interns and early-career professionals better understand both the business and its opportunities. But no curriculum can replace intentional engagement at the firm level. Brokerages must also invest in thoughtful onboarding, meaningful work assignments, mentorship, regular feedback, and opportunities for interns to connect their day-to-day experiences to long-term career possibilities.

The firms that win the competition for talent over the next decade won’t simply be those with the best compensation packages. They will be the firms that make young people feel capable, valued, and genuinely invested in from the very beginning.