HCI Blog

Are you ready to hire an intern?

Having interns within a company can be very beneficial for both the company and the intern. It is common for many interns to stay for many years to come within a company and become high ranking executives.

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But before hiring interns, reflect on these three questions:

1. Why do you want to hire an intern?

An Intern is not supposed to be an alternative for cheaper labor. When a young person enters an internship, they expect to have the opportunity to learn and expand their abilities though getting to practice hands on a possible future career.

If your business wants to train and mentor young minds, then hire an intern. If you expect to hire interns and use them as substitutes for labor, forget it. Interns are not necessarily considered an investment which you will have a return over.

2. What can I offer an intern?

Just offering experience to an intern is not enough as is paying him money for his work. You must offer growth opportunities to your intern. Make him feel that he has a future in the company! Think, would you be motivated if you knew that your work contract has a set end date?

If you intend on not hiring the intern after his internship is done, make this clear to him since the beginning.

3. Do I have a function I can give to the intern?

Make sure that the intern will have something do work on. He must have tasks which are not extremely complex or high priority. These tasks should be of importance to the business as a whole, but not essential to its existence, as errors will be committed by the intern.

Based on: TLNT