Internships are a win-win situation. Students or recent graduates get an opportunity to gain experience in their chosen industry, and businesses get an extra pair of hands to make workloads more manageable and increase productivity. Having an excellent internship programme can also boost a company’s reputation in the local area, which will have a positive effect on sales. 

However, hiring an intern isn’t only about getting cheap (or free) labour to complete menial tasks around the office. To create a great internship programme, you need to provide meaningful tasks that actually build an intern’s skills. Learn more about how to hire interns for your small business with these helpful tips.

Consider Your Goals For The Internship

Before you start planning the structure of the internship and the tasks that will be completed, you need to consider your overarching goals. How will the internship benefit your business? What will an intern gain from the experience?

For example, if one of your departments could do with some extra help, having an intern to pick up certain tasks could be very beneficial. Or, if workloads aren’t an issue, you could use an internship to boost your company’s reputation or discover potential candidates for upcoming full-time positions. 

Once you know which department you want to place interns in, you can consider your goals for their development. What skills will they be improving, and how will you measure and evaluate their progress throughout the programme?

Plan Out The Details

After you’ve considered your main goals for the internship, you can start focusing on the details. First of all, you should consider the structure of your internship programme. This includes the length of the internship, the number of interns you’ll have at one time, the main projects they’ll be involved in, and the salary and benefits.

Next, you can plan out specific day-to-day tasks. Make sure these tasks aren’t too monotonous and menial since your interns will be hoping to gain meaningful experience in their chosen field. Also, don’t schedule too many tasks for them to handle - interns are usually new to the world of work, so you don’t want to overwhelm them.

Finally, you should prepare some tools to help them succeed. Software tools are extremely useful for making it easier to complete certain tasks, and most young interns won’t take too long to get to grips with new software programmes. As an example, if you’re hiring an intern in the accounting team, you can introduce them to accounting software. With this software, they can undertake training on accounting concepts like calculating taxes, generating invoices, and making financial projections. Once their training is complete, they can then complete basic accounting tasks (such as documenting transactions) to gain experience and help the department. 

Understand Employment Law

While you’re planning your new internship programme, you need to make sure you’re sticking to the letter of the law. In particular, you need to understand when unpaid internships could be illegal.

If you’re going to pay your interns minimum wage or more, you probably don’t need to worry. However, if you’re looking at implementing an unpaid internship, you should check the employment rights and regulations surrounding internships. It’s illegal for private, for-profit companies to offer unpaid internships where the intern is doing work rather than work shadowing. Unpaid internships are allowed if the intern is completing the internship as part of a higher education course.

Reach Out To Local Universities

Establishing a partnership with a local university is a great way to find promising young interns looking for experience in their chosen industry. By partnering with these institutions, you may be able to advertise your internship on their campus and get recommendations from teaching staff, or you could even make your internship part of an optional course for a particular subject. Networking with educational institutions and advertising on campuses will also be a fantastic way to boost your business’s reputation.

In addition to advertising on university campuses, it’s a good idea to post your internship advertisements on job search websites like Indeed or LinkedIn. This will enable you to reach as many people as possible.

Set Expectations For The Candidates

Once you’re ready to start hiring, you first need to consider what you’re looking for in an ideal candidate. This will help you select the right questions for the interview process and hire the best interns for your company.

The easiest way to determine your selection criteria is to set out the minimum qualifications and experience required. You should also create a list of desirable skills to help you decide between promising candidates after you conduct the interviews.

However, you should bear in mind that many potential interns are still young and don’t yet have a lot of experience. An internship is designed to give them this vital opportunity, so don’t write off inexperienced candidates. Instead, you should value enthusiasm and a willingness to learn and improve.

Create An Onboarding And Evaluation Process

After you’ve selected your new intern, it’s time to get them settled into the company. To ensure they hit the ground running, you need a comprehensive onboarding process. Preparing a pack of training materials can be very helpful, and if your employees have enough time to spare, you could assign a mentor who’ll guide the intern through their first tasks.

In addition to an onboarding process, your intern will greatly benefit from regular evaluations. These evaluations will allow your intern to understand what they’re doing well and what they could improve on, and they will also have the opportunity to ask questions. 

Offer Feedback

Finally, once the internship has ended, make sure you offer feedback to your intern to help them identify skills they can improve. This will give them the experience and confidence they need for their future career, and in return, your involvement in this process will help you find the best emerging talent and boost your small business’s reputation.