How To Hire Summer Interns: Create A Successful Internship Program At Your Company

Thinking about hiring summer interns? A good internship program is a win-win. The interns can apply their schooling in a real world environment. They can start networking with professionals in their chosen industry. You can establish relationships with potential future hires. The managers that supervise the interns can improve training and mentoring skills.

What Is An Internship?

An internship is a structured learning experience for a college student. Internships typically last three months and may be part-time or full-time. Interns may be paid a wage or earn course credit. Unpaid internships are becoming less common in the United States. This is because employment laws require that interns be paid a wage in most situations.

An intern is closely supervised by a professional who is working in the field. An internship should increase professional and academic experience. It should develop hard and soft skills. It may lead to future employment with the company.

As a structured program, it should have specific educational goals, a timeline for completion, and performance benchmarks.

It’s important to understand that summer interns are not temps or volunteers.

How Can Summer Interns Benefit Your Company?

An internship program can be a key component of your long-term hiring strategy. Hiring summer interns allows you to evaluate potential future employees. And you’ll have extra hands without a long-term commitment. They can help you sustain productivity while your employees are taking vacations.

Interns shake things up with a fresh perspective. They bring energy and enthusiasm. You can learn from them as well. They possess the latest academic knowledge in your field.

How Do You Create An Internship Program?

Find meaningful projects that are sufficiently challenging. Don’t relegate the intern to hours of filing or similar tasks. Colleges advise that busy work be limited to less than twenty percent of work hours.

Determine needs: Which teams need help? What specific projects will the interns work on? What are the timelines for the projects?

Remember that you are selling your company. If you find a potential superstar, they aren’t going to be impressed with running errands. Or an unstructured program. The point is for the intern to have a trial run of an actual job role in their field of study. If you have weeks of filing that needs to get done, a temp would be a better choice.

Train Intern Supervisors

Decide who will supervise the interns. Make sure they understand what’s required. Document this as part of your overall internship program. You probably want an additional person to evaluate the interns’ performance.

Beware of Unpaid Internships

Unpaid internships have strict legal requirements. It’s better to pay your interns. Besides, there is stiff competition for top candidates. Even if you meet the requirements for an unpaid position, you may not have any applicants.

Identify Schools And Apply

Decide which schools you want to source from. Contact the careers offices for the necessary forms and requirements. You may have missed the deadline for this summer, but you will be prepared for next year.

Creating Job Descriptions For Intern Positions

Even though it’s a temporary stint, a good job description is essential. An internship program is only successful if you find the right interns. As with all positions, create a highly detailed description. Specify the length of assignment and total number of hours per week.

Don’t neglect to include the negative factors. If the schedule is not flexible, for example. If there are surprises, the intern may quit early. Then it will have been a waste of time and money for everyone involved. It will also reflect poorly on your company.

List the documentation required for application. You may want a transcript in addition to a resume.

ApplicantStack Simplifies Internship Programs

ApplicantStack has tools that make it easy to hire summer interns.

• Create intern job descriptions
• Automate intern job applicant scoring
• Track intern applicants and documentation
• Post to multiple job boards with a single sign-on
• Create structured intern onboarding programs

Interns expect efficient, mobile-friendly job application processes. Remember, today’s college students grew up performing every conceivable task with their smartphone. You can’t compete for top intern talent if you have an outdated recruiting interface.

If you haven’t automated your hiring processes, there’s never been a better time. Cloud-based systems like ApplicantStack Recruit are easy to use and set up. They are not only affordable, they provide an ongoing ROI comparable to other top business software.