Summer Associate Entertainment Trivia Night

This is the time of year when I find myself making a lot of phone calls to the recruiting departments of prestigious law and financial service firms. The reason is because of summer internships programs, which take shape during the spring.

If you’re reading this blog post, then you most likely are aware of these programs, and even more likely play a role in planning and programming them. For everyone else, just a brief overview: many professional firms, especially in large cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C., maintain summer internship programs. Extraordinarily competitive to enter and extremely challenging once you’re in, these programs are where high-performing undergraduate, law school and business school students spend their summers embedded into the world’s finest companies, gaining vital real-world experience to add to their resumes. From the standpoint of the companies curating these programs, the summer session is in turn a crucial opportunity to recruit top-tier talent, who might otherwise find their way to a competitor’s door.

And so, the summer program is a great win-win. Summer interns want to not only gain valuable exposure and experience, but also develop a robust network of future colleagues and mentors. As such, a significant portion of these programs is also focused on social and networking opportunities. These will typically involve things like baseball games, theater/Broadway shows, harbor cruises, or informal dinners hosted at partners’ homes. I personally was introduced to this rarefied world about ten years ago, when I first started out as a corporate event entertainer in New York City freelancing at City Hunt, a professional scavenger hunt company. It was there that I found myself being assigned to write and host hunts for flocks of summer associates – students not much younger than me, who seemed to be living the dream in the Big City by working for a couple of months at prestigious firms (and making a great weekly salary, I might add), while also doing fun things like – well, scavenger hunts.

And so, when I set out on my own and established TrivWorks in 2009 as a NYC team building activities company specializing in trivia, I knew that one of my main audiences could – and should be – summer associates.

But why?

It’s more than just a matter of, “Well, they need things to do, and trivia can be one of those things.” Actually, far from it. Do you have any idea how many fun, cool, awesome things there are to do in big cities like New York? These firms want to show these interns the times of their lives and give them an absolutely fantastic, well-rounded experience, so that when that job offer letter comes through sometime in the following months, the students will respond with an enthusiastic, “Yes!” and not go elsewhere. As such, these firms typically don’t hold back when it comes to their entertainment options, and are willing to pay for quality and memorable experiences.

I knew from my experience with the scavenger hunts, that team trivia could absolutely deliver on this promise. There are several reasons, which I shall outline below:

• Collaborative – Team trivia naturally fosters an environment which promotes collaboration, teamwork, and coming to a solution together.

• Social – Anybody who has ever been to a live trivia event, be it an informal pub quiz or one of our fully-customized corporate trivia events hosted by a professional emcee, knows that these gigs are social. You ARE going to mix and mingle and interact with others, there’s simply no way of getting around it. Because of this, it truly lends itself to delivering a positive social atmosphere, which these summer associates are expecting to receive during the course of the session.

• Smart and Challenging – Again, the people who attend these programs are the best and the brightest, and have overcome great odds just to be there in the first place. They want activities which are going to meet them at their level, and there’s really nothing that comes close to custom-written team trivia that’s designed for the specific audience, to deliver a brain-stimulating event (click here for a case study).

• Competitive – Did I mention that these people beat the odds to be part of these programs? That’s not just because they’re smart – by and large, they’re also quite competitive. They thrive on winning, and love the enthusiasm and charged environment a feisty team trivia contest produces. They don’t even care about the prizes, actually – they just want to win!

• Engaging for Everybody – I stated above that these events are collaborative, but they’re also engaging, for every single person who is participating. A well-designed trivia night for summer interns means that the teams have been carefully and thoughtfully broken down in advance, with just the right number of people per team to ensure an optimal collaborative experience. This means not too many people per team (I like to keep to under eight people apiece, if possible), which allows each and every person to have his or her voice heard. The questions are also tailored to the ENTIRE group, meaning there’s trivia for everyone, regardless of age, nationality, or managerial level (particularly important for summer associate events, which are often attended by full-time associates and partners as well). For another relevant case study, follow this link.

I’ve been producing and hosting summer intern trivia events for almost eight years now, and I have to say, they truly are always well-received. Everybody involved wants for these events to be a blast: the recruiters who put them together, the associates who are looking forward to having a great time, and the partners who want to get to know the potential new hires better. From my standpoint, when I talk to firms about adding trivia to their programming schedule, I’m as sincere as can be when I say that what we do absolutely, positively works. If they’re looking for a unique experience which is an absolute blast, is engaging and social, smart and brainy, is charged and competitive, and allows them to simply have a great time getting to know one another in a new and festive way, I know that team trivia delivers, 100% of the time!

For further reading, visit https://trivworks.com/2012/05/the-3-critical-elements-of-summer-associate-intern-orientation/