85% of employers want graduates to have work experience, yet only 18% of students felt education provided them with the skills that employers need.
The value of internships for businesses
Internships allow you to shape potential future employees according to your needs and culture, giving you a risk-free probation period for new hires before making any commitments. You get six months to develop and assess the quality of their attitudes and output, while your team gets a much-needed extra pair of hands. By the end of the period, you'll have a deep insight into whether they're culturally right for your company in the long term, and if they're not, you've still benefited from their quality output. Any intern who does transition into a full-time role will already be familiar with your operations and values and will have developed a sense of loyalty to the business as well. Try getting that through a recruitment agency!
In addition to de-risking your hiring process, interns also bring with them fresh perspectives and new ideas, and often knowledge or cultural awareness that your existing team members may not have. Internships aren't just about you teaching them - chances are, you'll have a lot to learn from them too.
Finally, internships allow you to give back. Outside of hitting CSR targets, we know that many organisations care about young people but don't know quite where to start. Internships are often the starting point for a career, and you can positively impact someone's life, alongside developing your business.
In all, running a successful internship can be an excellent hiring de-risker, an acquisition of knowledge and culture for your team, and a great way to give back to those whose situation you once found yourself in…but how can you make sure you're getting it right?
Let's start with the basics.
What is an internship?
Gone are the days of unpaid tea-making. Well, unless you want to run the risk of your brand getting destroyed on social media of course. In short, internships are periods of paid work experience. In an internship, a student or graduate can build workplace skills and industry knowledge, and employers can have an extra pair of helping hands whilst assessing an intern's capabilities for potential future hire.
On the surface, this automatically sounds like a win-win situation, right?
Despite this understanding, we've encountered many businesses that are hesitant about taking interns for a variety of reasons. If you're one of them, let's bust some myths.
Internship myths
Time investment
Myth: Taking on an intern requires endless hours of training, management and hand-holding.
Reality: Any new employee will require a certain level of onboarding and management to be successful, and a student or graduate is no different. However, if you invest in good quality training and processes at the start of an internship, you'll find ongoing active management time is easily manageable. Taking an intern who demonstrates enthusiasm and a desire to learn is the secret here.
Company size / lack of resources
Myth: You need to be a large organisation with a big graduate intake and an even bigger budget to make hiring interns worthwhile.
Reality: Interns are suitable for businesses of any size - from 'one-man-band' freelancers to global organisations. The secret? Embrace modern working styles to create part-time and remote positions, helping keep your costs under control and giving you the flexibility to scale if you're unsure of how much work you have for your intern.
Availability through the year
Myth: Internships are full-time during the spring and summer holidays.
Reality: Thankfully the world has grown up since these rigid systems were introduced. In today's dynamic world, interns are available right throughout the year and their hours can be part-time, flexible and scalable according to workload, business need and the individual's own availability.
Menial tasks
Myth: Internships always fall back to making bland cups of tea and sitting in on even blander meetings.
Reality: Interns are hungry to experience all aspects of your business, and there's no limit to the scope of projects you can involve them in. From admin to AI, sales to social media and data to development - young people actually want to see how these areas work in a real-life business and actively contribute to them too. You just have to let them.
Complex regulations
Myth: There's lots of red tape when it comes to running internships, making it easier to avoid the possibility rather than work it all out.
Reality: As an employer, running an internship is as simple as paying your intern fairly and creating a positive environment for them to learn in. Through a simple remote freelance contract, you can work with interns flexibly with no liability considerations for on-premises accidents or health and safety red tape. The individual accepts full responsibility for taking care of their working environment, along with other traditional HR burdens like PAYE considerations and sick leave.
Low ROI
Myth: Internships require lots of investment on the business side, without any guaranteed results.
Reality: Poor internship experiences are almost always caused by an absence of best practice, structure and/or appropriate support. And if a company isn't confident about providing this in-house, they can always rely on The Grad Soc to do it for them.
Key tips for a successful internship programme: a checklist
So, what are the basics you can do as an employer to run a successful internship? Here's our handy checklist:
- Paid at National Minimum Wage or above.
- Minimum/maximum weekly/monthly hours and clear start/end date agreed.
- An outline of the tasks/work/projects the intern will be contributing to, which is reviewed regularly to allow the intern opportunities to expand their experience and progress with more responsibilities.
- Any expectations are clearly communicated up front, including communication styles and regularity, deadlines and how to deliver work, and 'workplace norms' the intern is expected to adhere to.
- Access provided to and initial training on any necessary industry or communication software.
- The intern understands your mission/vision/values and the core business goals you are striving to achieve.
- Guaranteed face-to-face (in-person or virtually) time every week between the intern and their manager (we recommend a minimum of 30 minutes at the start and end of the week).
- Regular, honest and constructive feedback is given on the intern's work.
- Progress reviews in months 2 and 4 to give both you and the intern a formal opportunity to discuss progress and performance.
- When including the intern in meetings and emails, explain how they fit into the bigger picture of the organisation - context is important to interns.
- Discuss the intern's interests and goals and try to incorporate some of them into their role and activities - a little goes a long way here.
- The intern is given space to share their ideas for your organisation.
If you're looking for an intern with excellent communication and organisational skills - it's important that you demonstrate those skills too, in all your planning and interactions. Just like your intern, you'll get out what you put in.
About The Grad Soc's internships
At The Grad Soc, we help forward-thinking businesses attract, engage and retain diverse young talent through transformative internship experiences. We know that running great internships for both companies and interns isn't just a pipe dream, we've actively made it a reality.
Over the past five years, we have supported thousands of students and hundreds of companies to get the most from their internships, resulting in a 97% diversity rate and 90% retention rate.
The big secret? We care.
Still have questions or want to know more about internships with The Grad Soc? Get in touch with our founder George today.
Copyright 2024. Featured post by George Biddle, Founder & CEO of The Grad Soc.