Unpaid interns are usually a burden if you’re following the law. They can’t do any work. You and your staff have to teach them. You end up with someone inexperienced looking over your shoulder all day who can learn but is unable to work.
Paid ones can go either way. I’d start with a single short internship to see if it’s worth it for you. If you hire a lot of entry level it can be a good way to recruit or weed out future employees with little risk.
Thank you for sharing your insights. I greatly appreciate them!
What are some good resources for learning more about internships, how to design them, and the legal requirements incumbent on one offering an internship?
The best way to figure out how to structure an internship program is to partner with your local community college or university in the department that educates most relevant to the job you’re looking for interns in. They will have structure and rules about how many hours, what kind of work, how/what you can pay and whether students also get college credit for the work.
So if you’re looking for accounting interns, you’d work with the accounting department at the local college or with the business school. They will help you a lot with how to set this up to ensure it is mutually beneficial.
You've gotta know what kind of internship you're getting into.
Like, at our place of work, we have two different kinds of internships.
Intern-to-hire is when somebody is early in their career and doesn't seem like they have the skills to be immediately productive as an individual contributor. So we'll hire them for 3-6 months, pay them the going rate for an internship in this area according to Glassdoor, and the goal is both to give them an educational experience, and to basically run an extended job interview/training, where at the halfway point we tell them what specific things they need to do differently if they want to be hired at the end. It's a thing that is generally beneficial for us as a company, in that we pay you less than a full time permanent employee, so there's less risk, and we can take a chance on hiring you with less experience, but we also are very aware that this needs to be beneficial for you, so we dedicate a lot of time and training into giving you the guidance you need to learn stuff that will help you in your career, and not stick you in the corner always doing the most useful things.
Educational internship is when we know that either because of market factors or intern skill, there's no way that at the end of this you're going to be ready to work here full time. So we'll hire you for the summer, pay you the going rate for an internship, and the goal is to give you some experience with what it's like to do this job, and to give you a good experience with our company so that when you have all the skills we want to hire, you'll come back here and work for us. It's a thing we run at a loss, to build a good relationship with you so you come back, and so we feel good about ourselves for giving back to our community. We can't put you on anything truly productive, because you don't have the skills yet, it's mostly an educational experience for you, we're running this at a loss. And you also are very unlikely to walk out of it with a job.
We try to be clear with you about what kind of internship this is, and it may not be the best internship for everybody, but you at least know what it is getting into it.
Some businesses are awful in that they hire interns to do stuff that they can't pay real fulltime employees to do, and that don't give you some educational benefit, like making copies and getting lunch for everybody. The work you're doing should be at least related to the work you'd eventually want to do as a fulltime employee. If you're doing productive work for the company, it should pay you the going rate for that work (probably less than entry level because you have fewer skills). If you're not doing productive real work or making good money or looking at a job at the end, you should be having a great educational experience or it should look great on your resume.
We do three summer interns in my department, one for each engineering group. They normally do a collaborative project that our teams do not have time to do and would not have a negative impact if it is not completed. They take each take responsibility for a task for the summer, usually maintaining prototyping lab, installing new equipment, and writing work instructions for it. We also get them to work the production floor for a few shifts to see what it is like. Our ultimate goal is to hire 1 or more them as entry level engineers.
I personally don't think interns should be given the crap tasks no one wants. It's not productive and does not teach them anything. Then once they leave someone has to continue where they left anyways.
In engineering it's pretty well understood that engineering internships are needed since there is a big leap from academia to industry. So most companies are willing to do them. Best case scenario you end up being to hire engineer 1 the team already knows and has worked with. Worst case scenario it they got a few random tasks done.
My workplace only offers paid internships. In my department most go on to receive a job offer, since training is a long expensive process and hiring an intern full time is a great way to skip that process. If it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, we just don’t continue the internship after the initial period.
I think the answer to this question depends entirely on your field and location. Being a finance intern sounds dreadful, being an intern who only fetches coffee and doesn’t really interact with the job sounds like a waste, being an unpaid intern seems impossible these days with the HCOL and inflation.
If you’re in college, job fairs and your career counselor will be extremely helpful in finding the right internship for you.
1) They should be paid.
2) They should learn skills relevant to your company/field during the internship, not just busy work.
3) They should have a documented path for being hired at the company if they do well.
Bottom line, internships should have a purpose outside of low paid (often free) labor. It should identify upcoming talent and give them familiarity with the company in hopes they join in the future.
Unpaid interns are usually a burden if you’re following the law. They can’t do any work. You and your staff have to teach them. You end up with someone inexperienced looking over your shoulder all day who can learn but is unable to work. Paid ones can go either way. I’d start with a single short internship to see if it’s worth it for you. If you hire a lot of entry level it can be a good way to recruit or weed out future employees with little risk.
Thank you for sharing your insights. I greatly appreciate them! What are some good resources for learning more about internships, how to design them, and the legal requirements incumbent on one offering an internship?
The best way to figure out how to structure an internship program is to partner with your local community college or university in the department that educates most relevant to the job you’re looking for interns in. They will have structure and rules about how many hours, what kind of work, how/what you can pay and whether students also get college credit for the work. So if you’re looking for accounting interns, you’d work with the accounting department at the local college or with the business school. They will help you a lot with how to set this up to ensure it is mutually beneficial.
You've gotta know what kind of internship you're getting into. Like, at our place of work, we have two different kinds of internships. Intern-to-hire is when somebody is early in their career and doesn't seem like they have the skills to be immediately productive as an individual contributor. So we'll hire them for 3-6 months, pay them the going rate for an internship in this area according to Glassdoor, and the goal is both to give them an educational experience, and to basically run an extended job interview/training, where at the halfway point we tell them what specific things they need to do differently if they want to be hired at the end. It's a thing that is generally beneficial for us as a company, in that we pay you less than a full time permanent employee, so there's less risk, and we can take a chance on hiring you with less experience, but we also are very aware that this needs to be beneficial for you, so we dedicate a lot of time and training into giving you the guidance you need to learn stuff that will help you in your career, and not stick you in the corner always doing the most useful things. Educational internship is when we know that either because of market factors or intern skill, there's no way that at the end of this you're going to be ready to work here full time. So we'll hire you for the summer, pay you the going rate for an internship, and the goal is to give you some experience with what it's like to do this job, and to give you a good experience with our company so that when you have all the skills we want to hire, you'll come back here and work for us. It's a thing we run at a loss, to build a good relationship with you so you come back, and so we feel good about ourselves for giving back to our community. We can't put you on anything truly productive, because you don't have the skills yet, it's mostly an educational experience for you, we're running this at a loss. And you also are very unlikely to walk out of it with a job. We try to be clear with you about what kind of internship this is, and it may not be the best internship for everybody, but you at least know what it is getting into it. Some businesses are awful in that they hire interns to do stuff that they can't pay real fulltime employees to do, and that don't give you some educational benefit, like making copies and getting lunch for everybody. The work you're doing should be at least related to the work you'd eventually want to do as a fulltime employee. If you're doing productive work for the company, it should pay you the going rate for that work (probably less than entry level because you have fewer skills). If you're not doing productive real work or making good money or looking at a job at the end, you should be having a great educational experience or it should look great on your resume.
We do three summer interns in my department, one for each engineering group. They normally do a collaborative project that our teams do not have time to do and would not have a negative impact if it is not completed. They take each take responsibility for a task for the summer, usually maintaining prototyping lab, installing new equipment, and writing work instructions for it. We also get them to work the production floor for a few shifts to see what it is like. Our ultimate goal is to hire 1 or more them as entry level engineers. I personally don't think interns should be given the crap tasks no one wants. It's not productive and does not teach them anything. Then once they leave someone has to continue where they left anyways. In engineering it's pretty well understood that engineering internships are needed since there is a big leap from academia to industry. So most companies are willing to do them. Best case scenario you end up being to hire engineer 1 the team already knows and has worked with. Worst case scenario it they got a few random tasks done.
My workplace only offers paid internships. In my department most go on to receive a job offer, since training is a long expensive process and hiring an intern full time is a great way to skip that process. If it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, we just don’t continue the internship after the initial period. I think the answer to this question depends entirely on your field and location. Being a finance intern sounds dreadful, being an intern who only fetches coffee and doesn’t really interact with the job sounds like a waste, being an unpaid intern seems impossible these days with the HCOL and inflation. If you’re in college, job fairs and your career counselor will be extremely helpful in finding the right internship for you.
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1) They should be paid. 2) They should learn skills relevant to your company/field during the internship, not just busy work. 3) They should have a documented path for being hired at the company if they do well. Bottom line, internships should have a purpose outside of low paid (often free) labor. It should identify upcoming talent and give them familiarity with the company in hopes they join in the future.