Hiring for Impact #01: How One Intern Turned Project Ownership Into 60,000+ Social Media Views

What can happen when an intern is trusted with real responsibility?

At Startup Greece, one answer was SG Talks – The Angel Investors Edition, a seven-episode podcast spin-off featuring experienced angel investors from Greece and abroad.

Behind the project was Marco Siciliano, who joined Startup Greece as a Junior International Communication Manager intern and went on to take ownership of almost the entire production process.

The result? 22,700 YouTube views, more than 60,000 combined social media views, and a new benchmark for our podcast content.

From candidate to project owner

Marco’s background in journalism, copywriting, and content strategy immediately stood out during recruitment. But rather than relying only on his CV, our selection process included a practical task designed to reflect the actual responsibilities of the position.

He was asked to demonstrate prioritisation, journalistic research, content creation, and guest outreach. Despite having less than 24 hours to complete the task because of an approaching Erasmus deadline, his submission showed strong research skills, originality, and initiative.

With his funding deadline only hours away, we made the decision to accelerate our usual recruitment process.

It was a calculated risk based on his interview, experience, practical task, and overall potential, and one that reinforced an important HR lesson: structured processes should help organisations identify talent, not prevent them from acting when strong talent is clearly in front of them.

What Makes a High-Impact Internship?

Marco’s onboarding began before his official arrival, with tailored assignments introducing him to Startup Greece’s projects, brand, social media, and existing podcast content.

Interns are encouraged not only to understand what already exists, but also to challenge it, identify opportunities for improvement, and propose their own ideas.

That approach helped create the environment for SG Talks – The Angel Investors Edition.

Marco took responsibility for researching and contacting guests, developing interview questions, coordinating filming, identifying equipment, preparing the recording setup, hosting interviews, editing the episodes, and producing the series trailer.

Six interviews were filmed in person in Athens and one was conducted online.

Rather than simply assisting on someone else’s project, he became its operational owner.

The impact

Across seven episodes, the Angel Investors Edition achieved:

• 22,700 YouTube views
• 7,000 views on its most-watched episode
• 16,500 Instagram views on the trailer
• 60,000+ combined views across Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
• 246 Spotify listens

The series also raised the visual and editorial quality of our podcast content while providing founders and aspiring entrepreneurs with practical insight into how angel investors think and make decisions.

But for us, its strongest impact went beyond audience numbers.

The project became a clear example of what interns can achieve when they are selected thoughtfully, supported consistently, and trusted with meaningful work.

What we learned

Marco’s experience reinforced several principles in the way we approach internships at Startup Greece:

Hire for demonstrated potential, not only experience. Practical tasks can reveal capabilities that a CV cannot.

Give interns meaningful responsibility. Development happens faster when people can make decisions and see the impact of their work.

Stay flexible when the evidence is strong. Good HR processes need enough structure to support decisions – and enough agility to recognise exceptional circumstances.

This is what Hiring for Impact is about.

Not simply filling an internship position, but recognising someone’s potential, creating the conditions for them to use it, and giving them enough trust to turn that potential into measurable impact.