Hiring an intern is a great opportunity to bring the bestgraduates into your business that can offer fresh ideas and adifferent perspective, while reducing the risk associated withhiring inexperienced staff. To make the most of this, I’ve puttogether a short article explaining my top three tips on hiring anintern in the digital sector.
- Advertise
The first step is to create an internship advert, consideringthe tasks an intern can expect to learn about and what sort ofprofile you are looking for in your ideal candidate. It should beconcise and informative: to attract the best candidates yourinternship must stand out.
Since the digital sector is very popular with graduates, you’relikely to receive hundreds of applications, depending on where youroffices are based, which is great news! Before you jump into thismethod of hiring an intern you should consider who is best placedwithin your company to select the best applicants to interview andhow you will deal with unsuccessful applicants. Ignoring them couldbe perceived as impolite and damage your brand.
To help boost applications, you could promote your advert onyour social media channels. In a recent graduate survey weconducted as many as 76% useLinkedIn to search for internship opportunities,while Facebook and Twitterare both used by 25%. Of course, using social mediadepends on your audience and you may rely on online contacts tohelp disseminate the opportunity at your company.
- Go direct
If you have the time and resources, some businesses find successin building relationships with relevant university departments (forexample, UCL has a strong managementand innovation Master’s course) and digital courses, such asSquared Online or the London School of Marketing (which, althoughLondon-based, offers online courses). This feeds into circulating awell written advert and may necessitate a structured approach toyour graduate intake as you will receive applications at a specifictime of year and hire successful applicants over the summer.
- Agencies
Specialist recruitment agencies help provide their clientswiththeir ideal candidate and tend to provide a high quality, fastservice that is designed to save their clients’ time. They usetheir resources to attract the best candidates and possess theexpertise to whittle these down to a relevant (and manageable)shortlist and the experience to help you conduct interviews and runan internship programme. This is particularly relevant to thedigital industry – most graduates are members of Generation Y, andas such naturally digitally savvy, so it can be difficult to tellthe most suitable candidates apart.
Naturally, using an agency to help you hire an intern is themost expensive option of those listed above, but using the rightcompany gives you an opportunity to invest in future employees.After all, recent High Fliers research states that 37% of entry-level positions arefilled by graduates who have already interned for theorganisation.
Inspiring Interns specialises in connecting businesses withthe UK’s best graduate talent. Find out more about running yourinternship programme, including advice National Minimum Wage andhow it may apply to your intern, with Inspiring Intern’s free guideto internships for businesses, available to download here.
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