10 Tips to Hire the Right Interns

A comprehensive guide on finding the right interns every time. 10 tips to build a successful internship program.

How to Hire the Right Interns

Hiring interns is not any different from hiring employees. If anything, it's more complex. The burden of helping students explore their potential careers and gaining valuable job expertise is all under your shoulders. Have you ever hired an intern? What Are the difficulties you faced or the differences you observed? How did you benefit from them and what are the mistakes you would avoid in the future?
At RecruitmentBot we believe that a well-designed and executed internship program is very crucial to a company as it may result in producing a strong talent pipeline and strengthening a company’s name, which is why our screening system is geared to find you the right interns the same way it is geared to finding the right full-time employees

If you’re gearing up to hire interns, here are some tips to consider: 10 Tips to Hire the Right Interns

1. Design an Internship Program

One of the primary steps of recruiting interns is to design a clear internship process. There are questions that an organization must answer internally before seeking out people for an internship opportunity. For instance, what is the goal of the program? What are the costs of hiring interns? What is the timeline? Who will manage the potential interns? How many interns will you hire and for which departments? Once the answers to these questions have been achieved, the business must highlight them in their advertising program so the interns can know what is expected of them. The internship program should be explained thoroughly and any queries resolved beforehand so as to avoid problems in the future.

For instance, through RecruitmentBot’s screening process, employers can also hire interns

2. Determine Specific Job Functions

While it seems easier to hire more employees and hand them the extra work files lying around, it is likely to cause problems than be beneficial in the long run. It is important to design a specific and fulfilling task for your potential interns. The job must also not be monotonous and provide for a good exposure with great networking, which can be done by selecting a diverse pool of interns and making them work in teams to promote a healthy organisational culture. The organisation must also consider a backup plan in case the task is not as robust as they thought it would be, in this case, they may get the interns to work on what the organisation was planning for the rest of the year such as making them update your social media sites, conduct product research, and work on other projects you may have put on the back burner.

3. Know What Skills You’re Looking For

The best and somehow the hardest part about recruiting interns is the diverse set of skills that every candidate brings in which confuses you in deciding which one of them is better, and while it may be tempting to hire the intern with the most experience it might not be suitable if they do not have the skills required for your particular internship.
This can be avoided if the recruiter has designed a set of skills that he/she must want in the intern. The skills can be personality-oriented or job-specific. This will not only ease the process of intern profiling but also help save a lot of time if the recruiter specifically knows what they are looking for.
If you’re running your internship program for some time already, look at your best-performing interns and the skills and characteristics that help them succeed. Then you can look for candidates with similar profiles, as you know they have the potential to thrive at your organization.

4.Consider the Internship Timeline

Any goal that is not time-bound is purposeless and yet this step remains often looked upon by many recruiters. It is important to set up a target date so that the interns have a deadline to focus on and can prepare well in advance for the timely completion of their tasks. It could be 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months and can go even up to 6 months to ensure both the intern and company benefit from the arrangement. (Of course, you can always recruit interns for longer periods as well!)
It’s also a good idea to think about when interns need to start their internships and make sure your hiring timeline corresponds with that. Internship cycles typically coordinate with semesters, however, you should start your internship recruitment efforts well in advance to make sure you don’t miss out on top talent.

5. Select the Right Medium for Advertising

Once you have decided the skills you are looking for, the job description and the timeline. It's important to determine the right medium to reach your potential interns. Facebook internship groups, intern specific sites such as LinkedIn, or university job postings are the ideal way to advertise to your target market. Social and electronic media being largely accessible to everyone today is likely to attract more interns than other advertising mediums.
Also, knowing how your most successful current and former interns found out about your program and how they applied will help you target your sourcing efforts.

6. Be Clear About the Benefits

Of course, potential interns want to know about the benefits—what’s in it for them? Even if you probably can’t pay the interns much, move past the unpaid internships and offer whatever compensation you can.
Determine what the salary is going to be, as well as any other benefits and perks. Are there free lunches? Fun activities? Once you’re internally aligned on the salary, benefits, and perks, make them clear to your internship candidates. This will help you stand out against other internship programs in a competitive job market.

7. Develop Future Leaders

It is important to develop a relationship with your interns as more than just a worker-manager. The best way to do that is to help your interns grow and develop themselves for their future endeavours as internships are a valuable first experience for young people joining the world of work. You have the opportunity to develop your interns and teach them what they will need to know to be managers of the future that your organization—and the economy as a whole—will benefit from.

8. Invest in Training

Many studies have proved that induction training is likely to result in lesser problems among employees related to adjustability. To help your interns start their work smoothly it is highly advised to make them familiar with the organisational processes and culture before you can hand them any work. In the case of virtual/remote internships, you may have an orientation session with them online to guide them how they are likely to go about with their job and address any queries before the effective work period.

9. Map Out Your Intern Recruiting Strategy

Whether you are going to conduct panel interviews or a group discussion, make them take a personality test or take a survey to know their core values, map out a strategy that works specifically for your company and more so for your internship.

10. Think About the Future

After you hire interns, be on the lookout for workers who could be valuable team members if openings arise at your small business in the future. Many students look for securing job opportunities by working for companies as interns, and if they are able to perform the task effectively this might prove to be beneficial for both the parties.

Benefits of Recruiting Interns

Students and fresh graduates see internship programs as a way to earn college credit, gain their first professional experience, and potentially secure a job in a reputable company, but what benefits do companies get from recruiting interns?

1.Brings in New Perspectives and Ideas

It is inevitable that the greater the number of people, the more perspectives you're likely to get, and especially with interns who are likely to be aged between 18-23 years of age, usually have the ability to bring in a completely unique perspective that nobody else thought about and bring up creative ideas and strategies. The most successful organizations incite feedback from employees of all experience levels—and that includes the interns! In fact, try to include interns in your company’s brainstorming sessions to take full advantage of their unique outlooks.

2.You Gain New Brand Advoc

By recruiting interns, you can help spread positive word of mouth about your company and gain new brand advocates. They’re likely to share details about their internship with their friends, peers, and family members. They can also refer fellow students as interns if they enjoy the program.

3.Increase Your Entry-level Hiring Potential

When you recruit great interns, there’s always the potential to keep them as entry-level hires after their internships and studies are complete. Think of it as a trial period to test out their capabilities. By investing in training and developing your interns, you can increase their hiring potential and the likelihood that they will join your company full-time when the internship ends.

How To Build A Successful Internship Program

Hiring interns involves strategic planning. Knowing what tasks your interns need to do, preparing their induction and making sure they complete the task at hand. Here are the dos and don'ts you must consider to build an internship program that works:

1.Don’t Offer Unpaid Internships

Unpaid internships signal the potential candidates and your customers that the job is less meaningful than others and thus is not rewarded which will come in the way of the company’s plan of attracting the best set of individuals.

2.Don’t Rush the Recruitment Process

Interns should follow a hiring process similar to the rest of your employees, despite their lack of experience. Select the most qualified interns: those with interests and knowledge related to the positions you’re hiring for.

3.Don’t Rush the Recruitment Process

Classroom learning is mostly abstract however good internships can facilitate students by helping them apply their academic concepts to real work-life. Daily business tasks (which might be mundane to employees) may not come naturally to someone with no prior experience. Spending time to guide the interns and not being harsh on them can prove to be a long term benefit for the company. by providing them resources and training.

4.Prepare a Specific Project

Before you advertise an internship offer, make a list of the tasks you want to assign the intern. Identify the needs your interns will fill and design a step-by-step approach to help them reach their goals then assign an employee the task to mentor and develop the interns along the process .

5.Don’t Ask for Too Much or Too Little

Keep a manageable workload for your interns. If you assign them too many tasks, they are likely to get stressed and worn out. On the other hand, having nothing to do throughout an internship is frustrating for interns and doesn’t benefit your company. Try to keep a healthy balance of work and other activities because they have their studies to manage alongside and this is just a first experience.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Internship Programs:

There are many advantages to an internship program. Interning will not only enhance your training and allow you to gain skills, but it will also make you a better employee by giving you the self-confidence that is often a prerequisite in the workplace.

1.You Get Real Work Experience

The biggest benefit of internships is that they offer a space for high school/university students to gain some real experience before they gear up to start their actual work lives. This is very crucial especially for undergraduates as most employers are reluctant to hire someone who’s never worked before because they believe that they will be unreliable and not know what to do. This creates a vicious circle with no way out, which is why lots of graduates end up in completely unrelated fields. Internships can be a great solution to this issue as they allow students to explore their field of interest by simultaneously being and learning from a real work environment.

2.You Can Start Networking

The importance of networking is way more than its emphasised. It’s one of the most powerful tools in a jobseeker’s arsenal. Nothing is as effective at increasing your employment opportunities as knowing (and having impressed) the right people.

3.It Boosts Your CV

Internships can also provide for a good addition to your CV as they are a failsafe way to tell that you have work experience and know workplace ethics. The skills can be relevant to your chosen profession, which is admittedly crucial in a CV, but they could also be other skills, including communication and people skills that employers value.

Disadvantages of Interning

1.Low or No pay:

Most college students are financially challenged; relying on at least part-time jobs to get by. It can, therefore, be very tempting to take a job that has no relationship to your career goals, just to make ends meet. Thankfully, for-profit companies are pretty tightly regulated where internships are concerned, but even those that pay typically pay a significantly lower wage than regular employees would earn for the same work.

2.You May Get The Grunt Work

Some employers or managers take advantage of interns and give them mindless work that doesn’t build new skills. Interns can be viewed as temporary labor, which isn’t how you want to be seen.

3. It Keeps You from Entering the Workforce

Most internships are not proper jobs, many employers consider them a waste of time and won’t blink before they choose a candidate with real-world experience rather than an intern. This may mean that whether you intern or not, you’ll still have quite a hard time at getting your first proper job.

There are quite a few disadvantages to internships, but the advantages outweigh them. Interning will not only enhance your training and allow you to gain skills, but it will also make you a better employee by giving you the self-confidence that is often a prerequisite in the workplace.

On the balance, internships provide for a great way for students to gain potential work experience and for the company, to get valuable work done by creative minds and possibly gain future employees if they develop the interns, train them and teach them what they need to know. However, it's important to set realistic expectations to make the experience profoundly rewarding for you.