Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, success of this entire pivot relied largely on this intern's audit report. I imagine that the intern had a massive list of 12,000 URLs and would click through them, taking care to note why the site passes muster or otherwise so that management can add a layer of justification to the final decision. Even at an average of 3 minutes per URL, that still amounts to >600 hours of repetitive and sometimes traumatising…
You're assuming the intern actually did the job - that he didn't e.g. get bored a third of the way and finished the rest by dragging down the "No" field through the rest of the column in in Excel, and then changing a bunch of random URLs to "Yes". My experience is that most people assigned with boring, repetitive jobs will either automate some of it or start cutting corners to avoid the work. (In fact I'm starting to…
The intern's requirements in this job are not "press every link presented" they are "find out who is not providing value for their worth" however the press dgaf about that.
The above is not advanced management techniques, it's basic check work.