Ahva Sadeghi, co-founder and CEO of Symba.
getty
Internships are a powerful recruiting strategy for companies to cultivate and invest in talent early. In 2022, employers are expected to hire 22.6% more interns than the year before. The value and benefits of internships are globally realized by companies like Amazon, SAP and IBM, which hire thousands of interns around the world each year.
Today, companies are expanding globally for a variety of business benefits. In fact, 97% of 100 global businesses surveyed are planning on entering new markets by the end of 2023. SAP, one of the biggest business software companies in the world, operates globally, so having interns across multiple countries supports recruitment across their various headquarters. In fact, their current CEO started off as an intern, which is a testament to the pipeline potential of internships.
If your business is looking to expand, planning and investing in your global talent acquisition strategy is a natural next step. Internships can be a game-changer in getting international recruitment off the ground. Here are the four stages for planning a global internship program.
1. Get leadership alignment on your global internship program.
The very first step in mapping out your global internship program is to get alignment from your organization and its key stakeholders. It can take more than 12 months of planning to conduct the proper conversations with various business units, forecast your headcount goals and get the budget and necessary resources to kick off the recruiting process.
To begin, gauge your business’s immediate global needs. You can uncover this information through surveys, meetings or your company’s strategic reports. There may be different standards for recruitment when operating in foreign countries in order to maintain compliance. Work with stakeholders to understand where you can legally hire from as well as the basic skill and physical requirements to get the job done. Research which regions have the most profit potential, the cost of labor in those areas and where there are concentrations of people with the skills you need. Consider if your interns can work remotely; this can expand your talent pool and potentially reduce costs like relocation and office space.
During this phase, consider mapping out a pilot for your global program and a long-term plan for up to five years. Start small before you scale and stay focused on your business’s goals. With a clear strategy in place, you are more likely to win the budget and resources required to launch your global program.
2. Map out your global recruitment efforts.
One key step is building partnerships with international universities to understand their students and hiring timelines. It’s important that you represent your employer’s brand positively throughout this period to ensure a great candidate experience and a sustainable partnership with these universities.
Once you understand your timeline, you can begin to map out your recruiting calendar and strategy to reach your target number of interns. It’s important to meet your candidates where they are so this might mean investing in international travel to attend career fairs or hiring university recruiters in your selected countries. During this recruiting process, you will begin to understand how much investment it takes from your business in order to reach your recruiting goals so you can document and improve your process for next year.
3. Design your global internship experience.
Recruiting interns for your program is only one aspect of the internship cycle. Designing your program experience requires additional time and thought. Establish how you will host your global program. Will it be remote, hybrid or in-person? Based on your format, map out your onboarding and engagement process. It’s a good idea to document every tool your interns and hiring managers will need in order to be successful in their roles. You can be scrappy with what you currently have at your organization or consider introducing software like an internship management platform. This serves as a home base for interns to access resources, collaborate on projects, digest video content and discuss.
Additional resources should be made available to accommodate interns with different backgrounds whether that is a human resources representative in charge of cultural intelligence training and inclusion, a company psychologist or a translation service. It is highly advisable to provide all employees, including interns, with safe spaces like employee resource groups (ERGs) to gather with peers and allies of their identity groups.
However you choose to manage the intern experience, it’s important that you have a plan in place before your interns begin their program. Keep in mind that you may be able to recycle some of your previous program projects and activities.
4. Launch your program and measure your ROI.
Now it’s time to launch your global program. This is a major win for you and your organization; however, it’s only the beginning. As you continue to invest time and resources into crafting a global internship program, be sure to measure your return on investment. In addition to getting the proper recognition for your work, it'll help the organization improve your programming and continue to invest resources.
Some key metrics that you should consider tracking include sourcing channel efficiency, cost per intern hire per source, offer/acceptance/conversion rates and cost saved per intern hired. Year over year, you should be tracking the retention of full-time employees that started as interns. You can gather this data through pulse, mid-point and end-of-program surveys, as well as through one-to-ones and group interviews. Track trends across your various internship locations to compare performance. Analyze intern feedback to determine what program elements are successful and where there might be areas for improvement, taking learnings from one program to another.
Over time, you will begin to understand your trends and the long-term benefits of investing in global interns. Use this data to tell a powerful story that informs your leadership team of your program’s success to get more buy-in for your global program. Taking your internship program global is an exciting stage for a company's growth strategy and can strengthen your pipeline by including international talent.
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