Your organization may be mulling over the value of engaging interns, as they are a quick and easy way to effectively manage your workflow to accomplish immediate business objectives. These temporary workers help your full-time employees be more productive, prevent them from becoming overburdened by side projects and free them up to accomplish more creative tasks or those where higher-level, strategic thinking or expertise is required. The win-win value proposition for hiring interns is not only augmenting your existing staff but also helping the next generation of workers get valuable on-the-job-training, earn college credits, and potentially enable economically disadvantaged youth to participate.
Other factors to consider when considering interns
But did you also consider that interns can boost your ability to find new team members to help grow your business and accomplish your future, and more lucrative, objectives? With today’s unprecedented talent shortage, recruiting and hiring can be a drain on company resources. An internship program can be a year-round recruiting tool.
By appealing to tomorrow’s staff members when looking for internships, you can choose the best of the bunch when it comes time to hire. As an added benefit, a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that almost 40% of employers reported a higher, five-year retention rate among employees they’d hired via their internship program. And, according to the 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey Report published by NACE, the offer rate for interns was 67.1%, and the acceptance rate was 76.4%. In addition, while conversion rates have trended up and down in the post-recession years, they have, for the most part, remained higher than they were in the pre-recession years. In 2017, the conversion rate was 51.3%.
For both employers and interns, this model allows each party a chance to ‘test drive’ each other so that there are fewer mistakes made when it comes to making full-time staffing decisions. An internship can help vet for ‘fit’ and give the intern a chance to determine whether they like the field or the role before a full-time offer is considered. Building a talent pool through an internship program is a mutually beneficial model to support your business, as well as the viability of young adults who want the chance to learn and prosper in the workforce! Interns are budget-friendly resources who help with today’s workload through novel perspectives, fresh ideas, and specialized strengths, while offering an alternative channel for tomorrow’s workforce.
Act now and launch your organization to the forefront of this time-tested talent source.
