Setting Up an Internship Program: A Comprehensive Guide

Internship programs offer significant advantages to both employers and students. A well-structured program provides students with valuable pre-professional experience and allows employers to cultivate future talent. Designing an effective internship program involves careful consideration of various factors, with a focus on creating a thoughtful, equitable, and inclusive environment for interns.

What is an Internship?

An internship is a carefully monitored work or service experience where a student has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what they are learning throughout the experience. It distinguishes itself from short-term jobs or volunteer work through a structured “learning agenda.”

Key characteristics of internships include:

Duration: Typically lasting from one to six months, though it can range from a month to two years. This provides an introduction to the organization's professional culture, office politics, etc.
One-time Experience: Generally, it is a one-time experience.
Time Commitment: May be part-time or full-time.
Compensation: May be paid or non-paid.
Educational Integration: Internships may be part of an educational program and carefully monitored and evaluated for academic credit, or internships can be part of a learning plan that someone develops individually.
Learning Activities: Common activities include learning objectives, observation, reflection, evaluation, and assessment.
Balance: An effort is made to establish a reasonable balance between the intern's learning goals and the specific work an organization needs done.
Development: Internships promote academic, career, and/or personal development.

Learning activities common to most internships include learning objectives, observation, reflection, evaluation and assessment.

Benefits of Internship Programs for Employers

Internships provide numerous benefits for employers, including:

Read also: Setting GPA goals: An AVID guide

Year-Round Talent Pool: A year-round source of highly motivated pre-professionals.
Fresh Perspectives: Students bring new perspectives to old problems.
Increased Visibility: Visibility of your organization is increased on campus as they may become your best champion
Quality Candidates: Quality candidates for temporary or seasonal positions and projects.
Staff Flexibility: Freedom for professional staff to pursue more creative projects.
Cost-Effective Workforce: Flexible, cost-effective work force not requiring a long‐term employer commitment.
Recruitment Tool: Proven, cost-effective way to recruit and evaluate potential employees.
Enhanced Image: Your image in the community is enhanced as you contribute your expertise to the educational enterprise.
Source of Hires: Employers taking part in NACE’s 2019 Internship & Co‐op Survey reported that 56.1 percent of their Class of 2018 hires came from their own internship programs.

Designing Your Internship Program: A Step-by-Step Guide

Designing an internship program that meets your needs is as easy as five steps. As varied as organizations are in age, size, industry and product, so too are their internship activities. How do you know what kind of program will work best for you?

Step 1: Set Goals

What does your organization hope to achieve from the program? Are you a small organization searching for additional help on a project? Is your organization growing quickly and having difficulty finding motivated new employees? Is your organization searching out new employees with management potential?

A careful discussion with management can create a consensus on program goals that can be understood by all. The program and internship can be designed to best meet those expectations. As many staffing professionals may know, in order for a program to be successful, it will require the commitment of management.

Step 2: Write a Plan

Carefully plan and write out your internship program and goals. Managers, mentors, interns and university career centers are all going to be reading what you write about the internship. Draft a job description that clearly explains the job’s duties. Do you want someone for a specific project? What about general support around the workplace? How about giving the intern a taste of everything your company does? Structure the internship ahead of time so that you can be sure to meet your goals and not find yourself floundering partway through.

Things to think about include:

Workspace and Logistics: Where will you put the intern? Do you have adequate workspace for them? Will you help make parking arrangements, living arrangements, etc.?
Academic Background and Experience: What sort of academic background and experience do you want in an intern? Decide on standards for quality beforehand - it’ll help you narrow down the choices and find the best candidates.
Compensation: What will you pay the intern? Wages vary widely from field to field, but almost all engineering interns are paid. Therefore, be sure yours are competitive or offer competitive incentives. According to the 2019 Internship Survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) the average hourly wage for an engineering internship was $21.67, and $21.59 for computer science majors. Another way to calculate a wage for your intern is to pay a specific percentage of what the position would pay if it was full time. This can be a graduated scale based on the students’ level of education.
Supervision and Mentorship: Who will have the primary responsibility for the intern? Will that person be a mentor or merely a supervisor?
Responsibilities: What will the intern be doing? Be as specific as possible. Interns, like others in the process of learning, need structure so they don’t become lost, confused or bored. What role(s) will the intern play in the department and company? How often will the intern be in staff meetings? Will they work with upper management?
Additional Programs: Do you want to plan a program beyond the work you give your interns? Will there be special training programs, performance reviews, lunches with executives, social events?
Reputation: Keep in mind that your interns are walking advertisements for your company. If they have a good experience working for you, they’re likely to tell their friends - word gets around. A bad internship, by contrast, can only hurt your chances of attracting good students for next year.

A very important part of your plan should be the assignment of a mentor or supervisor - that is, someone from the intern’s department who will be in charge of the intern. This person doesn’t have to be a teacher per se, but should be selected because he or she likes to teach or train and has the resources to do it. If the person you select has never mentored an intern before, give him or her some basic training in mentoring.

Step 3: Recruit an Intern(s)

How will you find those ideal candidates to fill your internship position(s)? The number‐one tip from those who have established programs is to get out there early! This cannot be overemphasized to organizations that want the very best interns. Begin searching three to four months before you need a student to begin. Starting early has other advantages: the longer you accept applications, the better your chance of finding the best person for the job. The sooner you get one, the longer you have to form a good working relationship with him or her.

When you’re out recruiting, develop relationships with local recruitment resources. Promote yourself with school‐to‐work coordinators in high schools and with the career or internship centers at colleges and universities, attend internship and job fairs, ask about marketing opportunities at the school you are recruiting from, and send material to student organizations. Promote yourself elsewhere in the city by getting to know people at local employment organizations, and youth employment projects.

And remember; choose your interns just as carefully as you’d choose permanent employees. After all, they might be permanent employees some day. You’re making an investment; time and money will go into this person. This is where the interview will come in handy: Is the intern truly motivated, or does he or she just want a job? Will the intern fit into your organization’s culture? Does he or she have the level of experience you need? With careful consideration of whom to hire at the beginning, you can avoid some of the most common pitfalls of internships.

Last, but certainly not least, learn the legal implications of hiring interns. Just like any other workers, they are subject to legal protections and regulations. Protect yourself and your intern by knowing the laws: What work can and can’t you assign? Consult your corporate lawyer for more information, if you think you might run into problems.

Read also: Organizational Growth via L&D

Step 4: Manage the Intern(s)

Once you’ve hired a worker, you have him or her work, right? That’s true for interns as well as regular employees, but with an intern, you’ll be making an important first impression. The beginning days of the internship program are often its defining days. When you give them their first tasks, you’re signaling what can be expected in the future. If you give them nothing or very little to do, it sends a message that this job will be easy - and boring. Interns don’t want that, and of course, neither do employers. The organization of your internship program will probably be the single most important influence on an intern’s impression of your organization, and thus the chances that he or she will come back.

So how do you “plan for success”? Consider the goals of your program. The nature of the program and the activities that you choose to undertake should directly relate to your program goals.

First things first:

Orientation: Orient your intern to his or her new workplace. This might take the form of a conventional orientation program or merely a walk around the office, depending on the size of your company. After all, even though they may not be permanent employees, they’ll be spending a great deal of time in your workplace. Give interns an overview of your organization; some companies give talks or hand out information about the company’s history, vision and services. Explain who does what and what the intern’s duties will be. Introduce him or her to co‐workers and give them a complete tour of the facility. Making your intern at home in the office is your first step to bringing him or her back.
Resources: Give your intern the resources he or she needs to do the job. That may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many companies stick their interns out in the hallway or transfer them from desk to desk. That sends a potent message you don’t want to send: Interns aren’t important; we don’t want you here. Give the intern a desk, point out the supply room, and introduce the tech support people. If you intimidate your interns into silence, you could miss out on valuable contributions to your projects-or warnings about impending problems.
Monitoring: Keep an eye on the intern. This doesn’t mean to watch their every move, but do make sure you know what’s happening with their daily tasks. Watch for signs that the intern is confused or bored. As often as silence means that an intern is busy, it also could mean that he or she is confused and shy about telling you so. It’s easy to be shy in a workplace full of older strangers who all know each other. See whether the intern is trying to do anything that requires someone else’s input. Make sure that work is taking precedence over web browsing. Paying attention early helps you head off problems and bad habits early on.
Feedback: Along those same lines, it’s important to give them lots of feedback! Especially if your interns have never done this kind of work before, they’ll want to know if their work is measuring up to your expectations. No matter what the level of experience, they need you, as a more experienced worker, to let them know if their work is officially “okay”. Periodically, examine what your intern has produced and make suggestions.
Evaluation: Evaluate the intern’s progress every now and then. Remember those goals you outlined before? A few weeks after the internship begins, it’s time to see how well you and your intern are meeting those goals. Evaluation processes differ. Yours might be as formal as written evaluations every three weeks or as informal as occasional lunches with the internship coordinator and/or the intern’s mentor. Some companies have the intern evaluate the experience and the company as well. Again, your structure is largely up to your corporate culture and needs. As an added bonus, these evaluations will be handy later if you decide to interview a former intern for full‐time work, or to publicize how successful your program has been.

Maintaining program popularity will require hard evidence that your organization is getting a return on its investment. Some organizations have adopted a process of formal exit interviews. Through this process they can determine if interns are leaving the company having had a good experience, and it provides valuable feedback to managers for program planning in the following year. In addition to qualitative measures, a number of quantitative measures have also been adopted. Some common measures include the number of interns that become full‐time employees; repeat requests for interns from managers; and growing numbers of intern applicants. In order to successfully measure your own program outcome, you should return to the stated program goals, and address those outcomes.

Step 5: Keep Your Focus on the Future

With the job market experiencing a dearth of qualified employees, it only makes sense to investigate early those quality high school, community college, technical school and college students whom you can bring back later. Take on interns now and you’ll have a competitive advantage in recruiting the best workers-you’ll already be known to the employees you want most. Your new workers will already be trained for your workplace and loyal to your company, lowering training time, recruiting costs and turnover rates. You’ll build a reputation that will pay off with students, colleges and the community. In addition, your company will save money while benefiting from the input of talented, enthusiastic, innovative people. With all of these advantages, you might find that you can’t afford not to do internships.

Key Components of a Successful Internship Program

To further refine your internship program, consider these key components:

Job Descriptions

Create a job description. Students should be assigned pre-professional level work in which they are actively involved rather than merely observing. The nature of the position should be clearly described, including specific responsibilities and the department or division to which the student will be assigned.

Qualifications

Identify the qualifications the students must possess. Some employers request that a student have a strong interest in the field, while others require specific coursework or evidence of certain skills or qualities.

Training Plan

Develop a training plan. While students bring academic preparation to their employers, they will need orientation and training in their specific responsibilities. A good training plan includes a progression of assignments reflecting students’ developing competencies.

Supervision and Mentorship

Decide who will supervise, who will mentor. A supervisor should have direct responsibility for training and evaluating the student on the job.

Time Commitment

Determine the time commitment. Students are available on either a full-time or part-time basis. Full-time positions during the fall or spring should ideally be timed to begin in late August or early September, or January as it will most likely require the student to withdraw from classes that semester. Part-time or summer full-time positions may start at any time.

Compensation and Benefits

Establish the salary. Salaries should reflect the nature of the work performed and vary from one field to another. Some organizations also provide health benefits such as vacation leave or group health insurance. Consider compensation. As with full-time salaries, intern wages vary based upon things such as experience, academic major, position, and geographical location. We recommend for intern salaries that you pay 75% of the full-time rate for business and 75-100% of the full-time rate for technical positions. At UC Berkeley, student workers on campus typically earn between $17-$30 per hour. The exact amount varies based on factors like the type of job, the department, and the student’s experience. Some positions, especially those requiring specialized skills like programming or those held by graduate student researchers, may offer higher pay, potentially reaching $20 per hour or more. According to results of NACE’s 2024-2025 Internship & Co-op Survey, the average hourly wage rate for interns at the bachelor’s degree level begins at $23.04. Note that California intern wages may be slightly higher than national averages.

Concerns of Interns

Give us real work! It can’t be said too many times that interns want to work and learn. An internship can help you get a job done that you couldn’t otherwise, right? If you’ve brought on an intern as a recruitment tool, then how will you be able t…

tags: #setting #up #an #internship #program #guide