According to the employer resources from Internships.com, about 40% of new hires started out as interns.
Your internship program could easily be a pipeline to your next employee. So where should you start looking if you want to find the right intern for the job? We’re going to walk you through some of the top places where you should start searching to find new interns (and new hires in general) today.
In a study of high-performing volunteers from the University of Wollongong, researchers found that the best candidates spent a significant amount of time looking for their positions. While internships aren’t volunteer positions, other studies find they require a similar psychological profile due to their lower pay. Therefore if you want the best quality interns, you’ll want to make sure your position is easy to find (or make sure the benefits are really good).
Social media can be a great way to make new positions findable for prospective interns. Create an eye-catching offer and banner and you’ll probably have more inboxes for a position than you know what to do with. Just make sure you play to the strengths of each platform for the position:
A lot of new graduates may not have a profile set up on LinkedIn, and a TikTok campaign may be better if you’re targeting high-schoolers who are into videography.
And with most social media platforms allowing you to schedule posts way in advance, you can put together a whole year’s worth of intern-seeking campaigns in an afternoon.
Don’t just limit yourself to posting on your wall too, there are hundreds of Facebook and LinkedIn groups out there focusing on very niche areas of just about anything. A post in one of these groups may lead you to much more qualified interns.
Here’s a tip: Ask for a couple of things from interns besides a CV for their application to be considered. Otherwise, you’ll be weeding through an inbox of underqualified requests. Maybe give them a short 150-word explanation for why they want the position.
Today it’s an industry standard no matter what field you’re in to have a page on LinkedIn. Even the FBI has a LinkedIn page.
On LinkedIn, you can post location-based positions under the jobs tab on your page. This is an easy way to reach a large network of career-oriented potential interns as well as gain an easy list of LinkedIn profiles you can use to vet applicants.
An extra bonus for searching on LinkedIn: Posting positions to your LinkedIn page can help drive traffic and follows to your page and content. This in turn boosts your authority and may help you in the future with B2B outreach. Make sure your LinkedIn is fully optimized before you start posting positions.
Today there are a number of online job boards out there like Indeed or Glassdoor where you can find interns and interns can find out more about you. For the past decade, these have been the industry standard, replacing the classified ads of the 20th century.
Posting a position on multiple job boards can be a good way to make sure you get a wide range of interns. However, as mentioned earlier, you may only want to post to one job board. Making an internship too easy to find may give you a higher volume of applicants but not a higher volume of quality applicants. However, they give you some of the best overall online exposure.
Pro marketing tip: Listings on job boards can also help your website gain more exposure, especially if you go ahead and SEO optimize your job postings.
No one knows who you need for your company better than you. Your current employees may have friends or acquaintances they know would be a great fit for your internship. A bonus of internal referrals is you can be sure your new hire will be a fit with your company culture. Throw a small financial incentive in the mix and an employee referral program may be all you need to attract talent to your company.
However, be careful about making that incentive too big and maybe only give it out if the internship results in a hire for a full-time position: The same study of volunteers from the University of Wollongong showed that there was a heavy correlation between low-quality volunteers and signing up because someone asked them to.
Today more than ever, university degrees are expected to be tickets to great jobs. Universities are always looking for business partners for them to pipeline fresh, job-ready graduates out into the workforce. A relationship with a couple of reputable universities may be one of your best sources for finding interns today.
You can reasonably expect well-qualified candidates too. Universities will want to maintain a good relationship with your business and students who sign up for university internship programs tend to be career-oriented.
Job fairs may seem old school today, but few things can beat a face-to-face meeting with potential candidates. A quick conversation often tells you all you need to know about an intern’s willingness to learn and culture fit. They also are a nice small way to generate local interest in your business and maybe even network with other companies at the fair. At the very least you may get a handful of interested social media followers.
That said, it can be stressful on a small staff to send recruiters to a fair over a weekend or during the week. These days you may not have a pick of the same magnitude from job fairs as most new job-seekers understand a lot of opportunities reside online.
All of these above methods can lead you to a qualified intern, but they all require a lot of work from your HR department. Vetting long lists of applicants isn’t always worth the effort. If you really want to find where the best interns are fast, you should look for a platform that can help you out. That’s what we offer at Virtual Internships:
When you sign up to become an organizational partner of Virtual Internships, we help you find the right intern for the job every time at no cost to you. And because all of our interns are online you aren’t just limited to your own country’s talent pool.
Why hire a virtual intern instead of a normal intern? Read our blog for more details.
Here’s all you need to do:
The best part? All internships through VI come at no cost to you, and you can pay as much as you want. Visit our website and let’s get you started putting together a better internship for your business.