The Millennial Edge: 5 Advantages of Offering an Internship
If you’ve never personally taken an internship, know that the great ones always involve more than just fetching coffee and sorting mail.
A great internship is a true partnership. The young person gets valuable, real-world experience (and, sometimes, a nominal paycheck), and in exchange the business gets an asset that, with a little investment, gives a return that’s near impossible to achieve with regular employees.
What kind of return are we talking about? Here are 5 ways bringing on interns can help your business:
Consultants make a living by offering your organization an outside perspective. An intern can provide you with something similar – minus the hefty fee. If you establish a workspace where your intern is comfortable giving you honest feedback, you can gain the benefit of fresh eyes on both your product/services, and your workflow (this becomes doubly effective if your intern is part of your target audience).
2. Increase Productivity
No matter what your business, there’s always a way for your intern to help workflow. Backlog of outreach that needs attention? Conference room unequipped to handle your next meeting? Orders that need processing? With a little training, your intern can tackle them all, lightening the workload of your regular employees.
3. Encourage Leadership
Interns universally require one thing to succeed: guidance. Whether paired with a specific employee or placed at the disposal of an entire department, an intern will need to be shown the ropes, supervised, and mentored along the way.
Although this may sound like extra work for your team, this opportunity can encourage your employees to hone their leadership skills, possibly prepare them to enter a leadership role, and, in the long-term, alleviate some of the tactical items on your team’s to-do list.
4. Enhance Community Presence and Support
If you can, try and place your internship through a local college or university. Doing so not only boosts your visibility in the community but forges a partnership (or strengthens an existing one) that can benefit your business down the line.
In the same vein, economic development organizations are also great partners who can help you develop your internship program. Because people tend to have a favorable view of internship programs, the added exposure also helps cast a positive light on your business.
5. Develop the Ultimate Recruiting Channel
This is a big one. When you take on an intern, you get a first-hand look at how that person works, what skills they have to offer, and how he or she fits in with your company culture. In short, you already know if he or she will be a good hire following the internship program – reducing the level of risk involved when hiring on a newbie simply on an interview basis.
Fun Fact: Most Fortune-500 companies retain over 80% of their interns as entry-level hires.
Taking on an intern can be a low-risk, high-reward method to improving various aspects of your business. Just make sure you’re ready to invest the time and resources necessary to develop a meaningful program and, in turn, see a truly spectacular ROI.
Join other local powerhouses such as Princess Cruises, Advanced Bionics, and Kaiser Permanente…
CLICK HERE to post your internship and get matched with the right student interns!
The Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation (SCVEDC) is a unique private / public partnership representing the united effort of regional industry and government leaders. The SCVEDC utilizes an integrated approach to attracting, retaining and expanding a diversity of businesses in the Santa Clarita Valley, especially those in key industry clusters, by offering competitive business services and other resources.