Intern Onboarding Scavenger Hunt
A lighter, playful onboarding for interns. Challenges that get an intern up to speed with the team, the office and the rituals without the weight of a full corporate onboarding program. Designed as a starting point: extend with company-specific spots and stories. Look for the [Customize!] challenges as inspiration.
Challenges (20)
First-day ID
Take a photo of your fresh ID badge, lanyard or visitor sticker. The first official "you work here" moment.
The intern desk
Photograph the desk you have been parked at. Note: it is unlikely to be your forever desk. Treasure the temporary chaos.
Supervisor in the wild
Take a photo of your supervisor in their natural habitat: at their desk, mid-explanation, mid-coffee. Permission required, hidden camera not allowed.
Fellow intern
Find another intern on site. Take a photo together. If you are the only intern in the building, befriend the youngest-looking employee instead.
Shadow shot
Sit in on a meeting today. After it ends, take a photo of the whiteboard, doc or notes that came out of it (no faces unless the room agrees).
Coffee for two
Make coffee for yourself and offer one to a colleague. Whether they accept or politely refuse, photograph the two cups. The gesture counts.
First-task photo
Photograph the first real task you completed today, no matter how small. Even if it is just a doc you wrote your name on.
The senior interview
Find a colleague with 10+ years at the company. Ask them what their first internship was like. Take a photo together.
The cool corner
Find the unofficial "cool" hangout spot in the office: the right couch, the right kitchen, the table everyone gravitates to. Take a photo of yourself there.
Tools you had to learn
Photograph the software, system or login that took you the longest to figure out today. Shake your fist at it for the photo.
Office wildlife
Find an office pet, mascot or recurring decoration that has a name (the plant, the rubber duck, the haunted printer). Photograph it.
The lunch tax
Pay the unwritten "intern tax": eat lunch with people you have not met yet. Take a photo of the table (food, faces, awkwardness all welcome).
The advice scroll
Collect one piece of advice from three different colleagues. Write them down on paper or sticky notes, photograph the trio.
Emergency snack
Locate the snack stash you will rely on for the rest of your internship. Photograph the inventory before someone else raids it.
Mid-day status
At exactly midday, take a selfie with one word that describes how it is going so far. Write it next to the photo.
Signature wall
Find a wall, board, notebook or guestbook where employees leave a mark (a name, a Polaroid, a sticker). Add yours and photograph the result.
End-of-day notebook
Photograph the page in your notebook (or a screenshot of your digital notes) with everything you learned today.
[Customize!] Internship origin
Take a photo at the spot where the company first hired interns or where the intern program is run from. (Organizers: pick a real spot, person or moment in your intern history and tell the new intern what they are looking for.)
[Customize!] First mentor
Take a photo with the colleague your company has assigned as your buddy or mentor. (Organizers: replace this with a specific question the intern should ask their mentor before snapping the photo.)
[Customize!] Local intern hangout
Photograph yourself at the lunch or after-work spot interns from this company traditionally go. (Organizers: name the actual place and tell the intern who to go with.)
Frequently asked questions
Yes, the template is built for a single intern joining an existing team. The challenges focus on meeting people, finding spots in the office and absorbing rituals, not on group photos. If you are onboarding a whole intern class together, use the Cohort Onboarding template instead.
Spread it across the first two weeks. Most interns finish naturally as their schedule fills with real work. The point is not speed but giving them a low-pressure reason to walk up to colleagues and ask questions in week one, when the office still feels intimidating.
Pitch it as optional and as the team's shared first-week ritual, not a checklist the intern has to clear. Most working students enjoy the photo prompts because they are low-stakes and produce material for their own end-of-internship presentation. Drop or rewrite any challenge that feels too school-trip for your culture.
Yes, a few of the challenges work much better when a mentor walks the intern through. Specifically, the introductions, ritual-spotting and "ask a senior" challenges are perfect handoff moments. Brief the mentor before day one so they expect the intern to bring this up.
You can, but the Remote Onboarding template is the better fit for fully distributed interns. If your intern is hybrid (a few days in office, a few remote), keep this template and swap two or three challenges for screenshot-based ones from the Remote variant. The [Customize!] slots are designed for exactly this kind of mixing.