Talent Tips: How to Find Interns

Are you in search of rock star internship candidates either still in college or fresh off graduation? Whether you’re a Fortune 500 corporation or a small start-up business, we are here to help you find the right candidates looking to work hard and get a foot in the door. How should you go about the process and where should you look?

Things to Consider

According to the 2014 Forbes.com article “How To Hire Rockstar Interns For Your Small Business,” there are several things to consider when searching for interns. Let’s see what you should and shouldn’t do when looking for talented young people to join your staff.

Being able to connect with talented students and create a streamlined pipeline of talent between university and business, ColumbusInternships makes the intern-seeking process more efficient and effective for employers.

• Created by the Columbus Chamber to facilitate connections between the emerging workforce coming from top-rated universities and innovative businesses in the Columbus Region, ColumbusInternships.com is a tremendous resource for both prospective employees and employers.
• Giving employers access to student profiles from any of the 26 colleges and universities in the region, ColumbusInternships helps employers find the exact type of candidates they are looking for.

Where Should You Look? Can You Make This Mutually Beneficial?

• When looking for highly qualified candidates for your internship program, it is important to consider what you are looking to accomplish, in additional to what the intern is looking to gain. Creating a balanced game plan before an internship clocks in for the first day is important, and will save you time and frustration during those first few weeks of work.
• Set out a list of tasks that will help ease your workload, while allowing your intern to gain valuable experience. Be prepared for a range of questions by creating a training guide for your future intern.
  
  
  
  Basic questions such as — What is expected of them? Where is the copy machine? Where do they park? How do they clock in? Where is the break room? – may seem like second nature to you and your work environment, but may feel like a foreign country for an incoming employee. Take care of the little things and see the difference it makes for your internship program.
• Forbes says the answer to this question will determine the entire direction of your internship program. If you decide to hire unpaid interns, you are in for a confusing and extensive process. The U.S. Department of Labor requires organizations to meet six strict criteria before hiring unpaid interns, which can result in a bit of a headache. Here are the list of rules that your internship program must meet according to the Fair Labor Standards Act.
  1. The simple answer to this question is easy, pay your interns. Unpaid internships are generally reserved for major companies that think college students would be lucky to work for them, and for most small businesses, having that type of luxury isn’t much of a reality.
  2. If you decide to create a paid internship program, check out this list of minimum wages based on your specific industry.

  Will You Pay Your Interns?

• Intern Queen
  1. A premium service that does the intern scouting for you, Intern Queen can help you find candidates that match what you are looking for. If you seem to be drowned by the workload that owning a business comes with, using a site like Intern Queen may be a valuable tool when looking for top candidates.
• Intern Match
  1. Another premium service that helps employers scout top qualified talent for internships, Intern Match helps companies hire better candidates, faster. Claiming to reduce cost-per-hire by 75 percent and time-to-hire by 50 percent, Intern Match is your resource if you are looking to hire quality, quicker.

As talented students pour out of the Columbus Region’s many academic institutions, there is no better time than now to invest in the home-grown talent. With the help of the Columbus Chamber, you now know a few more ways to add talented prospects to your company’s farm system.

 Source: http://www.columbus.org/