Hiring an intern as a startup
If you are a start-up entrepreneur and you never hired anyone, you may be struggling with one or several of the following questions: Is it the right time to hire someone? What will I do if we lose a business and I don’t have enough work for my employee anymore? Or even: What if the person I recruit is not matching my expectations? Well, the good news is taking an intern on board could be your first “safe” move towards hiring. Indeed, opening your company’s doors to a student for a limited period of time will allow you to check how things go and maybe even hire this intern at the end of the training period.
Hiring an intern as a Small and Medium Company
If you already have employees, interns can help your company grow by increasing your organization productivity and progressively turning your executives into efficient managers, even true leaders. Indeed interns will work side by side with your employees, whom will learn how to train and manage people effectively. If they train them well, interns will end up taking on some administrative tasks and therefore freeing time for your busy executives, enabling them to focus on higher value-added tasks.
Interns are also perfectly suited to work on specific projects that your employees may just don’t have time to tackle because of their various other obligations. Thanks to their particular position in the company, interns are not distracted by the many emails or meetings your employees must answer or attend, hence they can dedicate their time almost exclusively to the projects you assign them. A good way to kick starts these projects, right? Moreover, by asking interns to work on particular projects valuable to your company, you will give them responsibility and encourage their creativity while improving their professional skills.
Human resources management is a key success factor, particularly at this stage of the development of a company. Training interns will be a good opportunity for you to assess their skills and work ethic during their internship, identify the best candidates and offer them a full-time position down the line.
Hiring an intern as a Large Corporation
If you already have good executives, great leaders and an efficient recruitment process, you might still want to take interns on board to maintain or improve your company competitiveness. Indeed, these young professionals will bring up-to-date academic knowledge to your company as well as fresh new perspectives on your firm organization, your markets or the technologies you use. Interns are looking for missions and tasks to use on their resume and in future interviews. Ask them to work on a process improvement or a specific project and they will come up with totally different ideas from a senior executive at your company; ideas that you could explore!
Yes, Gen Y tech-savvy professionals might not know how to use your internal CRM or billing systems at the beginning but, if you teach them well, they will figure it out quickly and they may even be able to improve it! Yes, these students might not know how to close a deal with a big client in accordance with “all proper rules”, but they will know how to reach plenty of new clients in a click! It’s a win-win situation: your employees will teach interns the codes and rules of your industry and their position, and interns will help them keep up with technology, become better leaders and think out of the box!
More generally, hiring interns helps spread the word about your company. If you offer great internships opportunities with meaningful tasks and missions and your employees are impressive mentors, interns will talk about their amazing experience at your company, advertising it for free!
Why is it better if your interns come from other countries?
You recruit international students because the best talents are not always next door
When it comes to recruiting the most talented employees for your company, the best candidates aren’t always located a few miles away from your company, right? Well, the same rule applies for interns. Sometimes, the most valuable students can be from another country or even from another continent!
The good news is: that’s no longer a problem! New technologies and laws made it very easy for companies to recruit worldwide. Nowadays, companies are no longer limited to their local labour market, and they are starting to understand how big this opportunity is. International recruiting is going to be the next competitiveness battle. Are you ready to compete?
International interns can help you build an efficient approach for foreign markets
If you are thinking about opening a new market abroad, or if you already opened it but sales aren’t increasing as fast as you expected them to do, hiring an international intern could be a wise move for your company. Indeed, this international student will give you access to local knowledge and insights from the region you are targeting. He or she will perfectly know the country’s culture and language, and within a few months, your intern could considerably improve the company’s ties with customers or clients from this market.
You want to widen your perspectives by hiring international trainees
If you want to keep your company at the cutting edge of technology, constantly innovating, then you might want to increase your staff diversity. Taking international students on board for their internships could be an efficient way to do so. Indeed, it is well-known that people handle situations differently according to their cultural background. Hence, the more multicultural is your team the more diversified will be the solutions they bring on the table to solve a problem. International trainees will trigger creativity and bring new points of view in your company.
You mentor international students because you are an entrepreneur
It’s part of your mentality: one day, you woke up and you decided that your products and/or services will help people for something. It can be anything: from enabling people’s houses to stay cool in summer and warm in winter (air-conditioning), to creating affordable travels or constructing eco-friendly buildings… Improving the world we are living in and making things change (or at least work better) is part of your personality. So why not help these young students from over the world improve their level of languages and gain a valuable international experience while training at your company? Are you ready to help them become the international young professionals they are meant to be?
Want to know why you should recruit your international interns through Internship Makers?
How do we work with companies?Will I have to pay my interns?
Well, in some countries such as France for instance, you will have to give an allowance (“compensation” in French) to your interns by law. Right now, it’s about 554 EUR.
In most of the other countries such as Spain, the UK, Malta, Ireland… you are free to decide whether you pay your interns or not and how much you pay them.
However, be the good guy!
First of all, if you are looking to attract the brightest interns to fill your internship positions you should consider paying them competitively. Wouldn’t you do so, if you were looking for an employee?
Secondly, interns will be more productive, loyal and committed towards your company if you give them some allowance. Even if it is not that much, they will feel more valued and will interest themselves more in your business.
Finally, by giving allowance to your interns you make sure you open your internship opportunities to candidates from all social backgrounds – not just the ones who can afford to take an unpaid internship.