Interns, VAs, and the Real Cost of Your Time

I’ve been seeing quite a few posts lately about hiring Spring and Winter interns. That’s encouraging to see. Internships are important, and students genuinely want exposure and learning. Interns can absolutely add value. Especially for basic research, documentation, and supporting tasks. At the same time, it’s worth thinking about how interns fit into a search journey. Most interns: • Need onboarding and training • Work for a short, fixed period • Require frequent guidance and feedback • Are still learning how the process works None of this is a bad thing. It’s expected. But for searchers, time is usually the most limited resource. Every hour spent training or supervising is an hour not spent: • Speaking with business owners • Building relationships • Reviewing opportunities • Moving deals forward This is where experienced support can play a different role. An experienced Virtual Assistant can: • Handle repetitive and operational work consistently • Understand the search process with minimal training • Stay involved long term • Even manage or support interns, so the searcher doesn’t have to In many cases, the best setup is not interns versus VAs, but interns supported by an experienced VA. That way, learning still happens, costs stay controlled, and the searcher’s time is protected. I’m curious to hear from the community: How are you currently balancing interns, experienced help, and your own time during the search? For those exploring experienced support, we provide trained Virtual Assistants who have worked with 20+ searchers to streamline their deal sourcing. Happy to share more info in DM or via email.