How to get the most out of your internship program

If a day in the life of an intern at your organization still involves making coffee and copies, sit back, relax, and allow us to remind you of the purpose and potential of an internship program. (Otherwise, gold stars for you!)

“If you want access to the best early talent, having an internship program gives you a first row seat into what you could be recruiting and who you could be converting,” Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, said during a recent episode of HR Brew’s People Person podcast.

Cruzvergara sat down with Kate Noel, SVP and head of people operations at Morning Brew, to discuss the objectives and opportunities of internship programs.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the true purpose of an internship program?

If you are the student, the purpose of an internship is to learn…And it’s to build connections…If you’re an employer, it’s honestly to build your early talent pipeline.

Do you believe the current state of the market has impacted the point of an internship for employers or for students?

It is a tough market. Internships are down…and competition is up…I heavily encourage every employer to be posting internships because trust me, you will get good talent.

Whose responsibility is it to figure out the value of an internship program in a company?

If you don’t have the buy-in of senior leaders or of the hiring managers, you could have the best HR team and they are not going to be able to make the progress that they need to be able to make. So I think it’s a bit of a shared responsibility in that it is certainly HR’s job to make the case and to show the value and the ROI that the company will get from having interns. But it is also the responsibility of the actual hiring managers and the business leaders to see that value and to actually make it a priority. Without those two, it’s not going to happen.

What does priority look like?

Not only are you hiring them, you have money to actually pay them, but now are we onboarding them? Are we ensuring it’s a good experience? Are they actually learning something? Are they making those connections?

You mentioned something that makes my heart happy: money. Should all internships be paid?

As an employer, you get the best talent pool if you pay. It’s just basic economics, right? If you are not able to pay, you are naturally closing off part of your talent pool…Now, if you happen to be an employer that’s in an industry where historically none of your peers pay…I still recommend doing some type of stipend….Anything is better than nothing.

What responsibility does HR have to ensure there is meaningful work happening in their organization’s internship program?

Some of the pre-work before you even post an internship opening you can do with a hiring manager or the functional managers that would be leading the interns is figuring out what are you actually going to have the interns do? What will the job assignments be? Will there be some kind of project? Will they present that project to other leaders in the organization? A lot of that can be decided before you put a job description together so that when you’re actually interviewing…you have a very clear picture of what you’re telling the intern to expect.

I love that. There should be a framework.

And of course, HR should probably be responsible for the onboarding and for the orientation.

Another typically missed opportunity is offboarding interns.

Even something as small as talking to the intern about, “I want to stay in touch with you, or this is how you should stay in touch with us.” Things like that is really, really helpful because a lot of interns, a lot of students ask us, “What should we do? Should we keep in touch? How do we keep in touch? Is it too much if I email once a month or once a semester to check in?” They have questions about that. So if you as an organization actually have guidelines, share it explicitly.

How do you measure ROI, beyond full-time conversion?

One thing I would care about if I were an employer is reputation. So what is the intern’s perception of our culture and of our company post-internship? … I might not convert that intern right away, but if the intern had a great experience, maybe they’ll come back to me as a slightly more seasoned person two years later, three years later, right? That’s still a win for me…But again, that depends on perception of your culture and of your organization and how you offboard them as well, even if you don’t select them right away.

For more from this conversation, tune into the People Person podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, or watch it below.