9 Steps to Launching Your Internship Program

Your ability to attract young talent is critical to building the foundation for your workforce in the years to come.

A strategically focused internship program will help you recruit the talent your company needs, bring in new ideas and perspectives, and positively impact your employer brand.

66% of interns are hired at the company where they completed their internship and are more likely to stay at your company than non-intern starters.

I started my journey at my current company as an intern, so I can attest firsthand to how effective these programs are.

Here I'll tell you how to start your own internship program and share some best practices.

How to start an internship program

Step 1: Define goals and objectives

All human resources efforts must be intentionally aligned with your company's strategic goals.

This also applies to your internship program. The first step in building your internship program should therefore be to define the goals and think carefully about how the program will support your overall company strategy.

I recommend that you set meaningful KPIs that allow you to track progress against your goals, make data-driven decisions, and ensure you are successfully contributing to your company's short- and long-term goals.

Step 2: Design the program

The design of your program is essentially the framework within which you will implement the above goals.

This begins primarily with planning the workforce. How many and which talents will you need in the different functions in the future in order to achieve your company's goals?

You must staff your internship program appropriately to meet your future hiring needs.

This may mean that you need to limit somewhat the types of tasks you hire for.

If you e.g. For example, if you have a growing need in your technical teams but not in finance, then it would make sense to offer technical rather than financial internships.

Once you know what type of talent you need, you can start defining the tasks you want your interns to take on.

Well-crafted job descriptions will help you define tasks and responsibilities as well as determine your compensation and benefits strategy for your internship positions.

You should use job expectations - both during and after the internship program - to determine the appropriate compensation needed to attract and retain top talent for your internship programs and young talent.

Finally, when designing your program, I recommend developing a solid evaluation strategy that aligns with your program's goals.

Assessment components to consider:

Satisfaction of interns and internship managers with the program
Hiring conversion rates
Retention and engagement of hired interns over time.

Step 3: Designing the Intern Experience

After you've created the overall structure of your internship, it's time to design and document the actual experiences your interns will have during their internship.

The important decisions you need to make include:

How long will the internship last?
What are the general learning objectives and supporting learning experiences of your internship?
What experience do you expect the intern to have with the hiring manager/team?
What experiences do you expect from interns in a group?
What networking opportunities/opportunities for contact with managers are offered to interns?
What should the support/feedback look like for the individual?

In my opinion, your internship program should include a healthy balance between interns' cohort-based experiences and work experiences within their manager/team.

Cohort-based experiences could include team-building exercises, business inductions to learn more about different areas of your company, and community service activities.

Step 4: Manage resources for the internship program

Once you have determined your program design, I encourage you to think about managing the resources for your internship program.

Depending on the size and scope of your program, you will need to ensure you have an appropriate support structure in place to manage your program now and in the future.

A smaller program may only need one internship coordinator to manage the program. For larger programs, you may need an entire university relations team to manage the breadth of your internship experience.

You also need to ensure that you have enough internship managers to support the number of interns you hire.

Your intern supervisors must have the bandwidth to mentor, develop, and support your interns to succeed.

Remember that your interns will likely need significantly more support than an experienced colleague to be successful.

Introduce your intern supervisors appropriately to the program, let them know the specific expectations of their role as intern supervisors, and give them the tools and resources necessary to create the best possible experience for your new interns.

Step 5: Develop a recruiting and university relations strategy

Developing a marketing strategy that aims to meet your interns where they are is crucial. I recommend two focus areas: higher education and social media.

Building your brand as a company that hires interns on LinkedIn is a great way to attract Gen Z talent, and TikTok and other social media platforms are increasingly being used as recruiting tools.

Building relationships with specific universities is another effective way to attract talent to your company and allows you to have a presence on campus to meet and recruit your interns.

Strive to develop relationships with schools that offer degrees that meet your hiring needs and that can provide sufficient talent to meet your company's needs.

Additionally, you can build connections with universities that can meet your needs for employees with different skills.

A new approach is to work directly with universities that train talent that specializes in the positions you want to fill, such as: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) or Historically Black Colleges (HBCs).

This way, you can build a foundation of early-career talent and transform your workforce for years to come.

Step 6: Screening and Interviews

Even if you don't want to make your interview process overly strenuous, I would recommend at least two rounds of interviews.

The first round should be conducted centrally by your talent acquisition/internship program management team.

The purpose of this initial interview phase is to ensure that the candidates being passed on to the staff responsible for recruiting interns are well-vetted, meet the advertised requirements, and align with your company's future hiring needs.

Once your initial talent pool is vetted, you can move qualified candidates to the second phase with the managers who will mentor them during their internship period.

As previously mentioned, providing your internship managers with the necessary tools and support is critical to the success of the program.

An important tool I would recommend is a conversation guide. This allows you to ensure that your applicants are assessed on the same questions/evaluation criteria, resulting in a more objective assessment of your talents and better legal compliance to avoid discrimination or illicit interview practices.

After review by hiring managers, your talent acquisition team can make offers and retain your interns.

Step 7: Acceptance and graduation of interns

Hosting your interns is the moment your hard work pays off. If you are well prepared, this will be the simplest and easiest phase of your process.

An essential component when accepting interns is their orientation and training. A thorough orientation will help them familiarize themselves with your company's culture and policies and understand key team members (e.g., the internship program team, their hiring manager, and other support structures).

Throughout the time you host your interns, they should participate in a healthy mix of programmatic/group-based activities and work activities within their manager's team.

Through both channels, you must ensure that interns receive sufficient professional development (e.g. workgroups, training, and access to online learning opportunities), performance and development feedback, and key networking opportunities with both other interns and colleagues/leaders within your organization Get organization.

I still rely on the relationships I made during my internship years ago and believe that networking is one of the most important mechanisms you can use to promote the growth and internal mobility of your talent.

Step 8. Expand job offers

At the end of the internship program, you should immediately move on to the job offer phase.

The program should have provided you with a meaningful assessment of your interns and given them a unique insight into the opportunities at your company.

I challenge you to set a goal of transitioning at least 65% of your interns into employment upon their upcoming graduation. This is the only way you can get a real return on investment in your internship program.

Step 9. Rethink your goals and don't just repeat them.

The conclusion of your internship cycle is the perfect time to rethink your assessment strategy.

Throughout the process, and especially during the time your interns spend with your company, you should implement your evaluation strategy and collect key data to iterate your program and ensure it continues to meet your business needs.

Exit interviews are another important source of data that can help you make adjustments for the next round of interns.

Additionally, it is important that you continually review the goals you want to achieve with your internship and adapt your program to meet those needs as your business goals evolve.

A critical mistake I see when designing internship programs is blindly repeating internship programs from year to year without adapting them to the changing priorities of your talent strategy.

Best practices for internship programs

Let’s take a look at some best practices you should use when implementing your internship strategy.

Hire interns sooner than you think

Competition for the best talent gets tougher every year, and starting the hiring process early is a good way to ensure you don't miss out on the rush for the best interns.

Assuming you're taking on interns in the summer, I recommend advertising and searching for your internships the fall before.

The sooner you can advertise and offer your internship opportunities, the better you can ensure you have a competitive selection of interns when your program gets underway.

Strong managers and mentors

In addition to the core group of colleagues leading your internship program, there are two critical roles that will have a major impact on your interns' experiences: their managers and their mentors.

We all know the saying, "Employees don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses," and research shows that 50 to 75% of employees leave because of their boss.

So if you want to get your interns to stay with you after they graduate, it's important that you pair them with managers who can offer them a special experience.

It is important that you match interns with managers who have the right skills and mentality and have enough time to support them during their internship.

Consider the opportunity to host an intern at your company a special privilege available only to the best and brightest of your hiring managers.

Additionally, support from a mentor can be an important support needed for success during the internship and beyond.

One of my favorite practices is to assign your interns a mentor who is early in their career or, better yet, a graduate of your internship program.

This way, they can build relationships with someone not too dissimilar to themselves who can help them navigate both their work and your company.

Offer meaningful tasks

An important component of your internship program is providing your interns with meaningful work that challenges them and helps them grow professionally.

Intrinsic motivation (being motivated by the activity/work itself) is a key motivating factor, especially for talent at the beginning of their career.

Your interns deserve to be involved in interesting and exciting work that challenges them and gives them the opportunity to learn from your best and brightest.

This is crucial to ensuring your interns are engaged throughout their experience and to attracting them to your company as full-time employees upon graduation.

Offers at the end

While this has already been mentioned, it's worth repeating: incorporating job postings into your process is critical to retaining the next generation of talent.

Your internship program can be an important foundation for your company to move into a leadership position, and I highly recommend making a job offer to interns you want to hire even before they go back to school.

Paid vs. unpaid

Although this is ultimately a personal decision that you must make based on the strategic direction of your company, paid internships typically have better outcomes for both the interns themselves and employers.

I encourage you to read the National Association of Colleges and Employers' statement on unpaid internships, which discusses this issue in great detail.

Their research shows that students who complete a paid internship are more likely to receive a job offer and be offered a higher salary than those who participate in no or unpaid internship programs.

Additionally, unpaid internships can lead to systemic inequities as women, Black, and Hispanic students are underrepresented in paid internships.

This harms both the interns themselves and your ability to achieve your organization's DEIB efforts.

Advantages of a company internship

My internship was my golden ticket to the company where I still work today.

The relationships I made during my internship were critical to my advancement into a director-level leadership position.

Employers should offer internships because it's the right thing to do to nurture the next generation of talent. However, I can assure you that the benefits of an internship program are far from just altruistic.

Recruitment of talent at entry level

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 66.4% of internship positions convert to full-time positions. This is an important entry into your talent pool for young talent and an important opportunity for you to attract the next generation of talent into your company.

Advanced interviews

Hiring decisions are tricky, to say the least. It is very difficult to determine a person's suitability for both a job and a company during an interview.

Internships provide employers with the added benefit of seeing their potential talent in action before making them a job offer.

Additionally, research has shown that interns who become employees are 32% more likely to be retained than those who did not intern at your company, meaning you are more likely to retain your talent and avoid the additional costs associated with employee turnover can lower.

Considering that the cost of replacing an employee is typically 1.5 to 2 times their annual salary, consider your internship program as a cost-effective mechanism for attracting and retaining young talent to your company.

Positive public relations and building your brand

Internships can do wonders for your brand awareness and shine a more positive light on your company, helping to attract talent far beyond your interns.

Social media presence should be an important part of your internship. Younger audiences use social media much more intensively, and your interns can play an important role as brand ambassadors both online and on campus.

Supports your DEIB efforts

A well-designed internship program can be a primary tool to support your DEIB efforts.

By using a variety of interns, you can attract a variety of early-career talent and begin to fill your talent pipeline.

Recent data on college graduates also shows that the wage gap for female college graduates is widening. They earn just 72 cents on the dollar of their male counterparts (in recent years it has been 81 cents on the dollar).

Targeted efforts to support female talent and employ them on reasonable terms during their internships can have a lasting impact on reducing the pay gap for women and preparing female colleagues for long-term success.

Internship programs help you win the talent war

Is your company prepared for the aging workforce?

Internships are a cost-effective way to attract high-quality talent to your company who are more likely to stay longer.

Plus, they’re good for your employer brand and DEI efforts.

I would encourage you to think about how you can retain and retain the graduates of your internships after they join your company.

Your former interns are the future of your company, so it pays to continue investing in their growth and development.

Make sure they know they are important, invest in them as a priority, give them feedback, and most importantly, continue to put them where they can shine.

FAQs

How long should an internship last?

The duration of your internship depends largely on the goals of your company and the tasks you want to fill.

Most professional internships last 1 to 3 months, a long enough period of time to give the intern the opportunity to familiarize themselves with a task and a company. This is typical for summer internships.

Longer-term internships can be beneficial for more complex tasks and have the added benefit of giving the intern the opportunity to better understand the work environment and make a greater contribution to the company.

A good example of this are positions such as clinicians, pharmacists and other healthcare providers.

These careers often require longer internships that span the entire school year and provide students with the critical skills they need to be successful in their new position after graduation.

What are the different types of internships?

There are numerous types of internships you can offer, from traditional summer internships to full-time internships. Here are some common examples:

Summer internship. Short but intense experience during the summer months when students have a break from academic demands
Internships tailored to the semester. Typically part-time or reduced-hour internships that span a fall or spring semester and combine work with the student's academic priorities
Rotational Internship Programs. In these programs, the intern rotates through different departments or teams to gain a holistic view of the company and expand their skills (e.g., in an HR rotation internship, the intern rotates through talent acquisition, learning and development, and compensation). This is particularly useful for high-potential programs and allows interns to choose a specialization upon completion of the program.
Integrative internship programs. An inclusive internship program aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion generally focuses on providing underrepresented groups/populations the opportunity to improve their skills and gain employment.

Invest in your company's future with a structured internship program. With IceHrm's support, nurture talent and strengthen your employer brand.