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Hiring interns is a great way to get hands-on help with your business. It’s also the perfect time to assess your company culture and make sure you’re hiring people who will be happy in their jobs. Here are five easy steps for finding and hiring an intern successfully, plus some ideas of what they should expect from their job!
The “how to hire interns for free” is a guide that explains how to find and hire an intern. It includes 5 steps that will help you in your search.
Hiring an intern is a terrific method to tap into brilliant people who have not yet finished from college or have just graduated. While there are paid and unInternship with Pays available, it is not free work, and it does need you to become a teacher, mentor, and guide. Interns can be found by contacting your college’s career center or searching job boards such as ZipRecruiter.
Child labor regulations were designed by the Department of Labor for children. Read our advice on employing minors to guarantee compliance, since some interns may fall into that category.
1. Identify Your Needs
The majority of internships are project-based. It’s similar to employing a contract worker in that you determine ahead of time what you want them to perform and how acquiring or developing that knowledge will help them advance in their career. Interns usually work on projects that need certain abilities and are time-boxed so that a student may finish their assignment over the summer or by spending a few hours per week during the school term.
Position vs. Project
An internship is often focused on a much smaller skills-based project, while a standard work position may concentrate on a variety of job functions. It’s fairly commonplace for interns to work on project-based research projects that end in a deliverable, such as a report.
Based on their academic major, interns may offer the following projects:
- Students studying international business, economics, or biological areas are often able to help with data analytics and trend analysis.
- Engineering and architectural students may be able to assist you with setting up and launching your 3D printer, as well as re-designing your warehouse or retail shop layout.
- Graphic Design: During their time in school, art and design students are often required to develop a portfolio. They may add photos to your current website and marketing brochures. Marketing students that are learning to use website building technologies may be able to assist you in getting your retail ecommerce site up and running or optimizing it.
- Streamline Business Procedures: A business student might be assigned the duty of documenting your processes in order to uncover time saves or software solutions. A new hire onboarding program for new recruit orientation and training might be assigned to an HR or instructional design student.
Full-Time Work vs. Flexible Schedule
Interns are usually part-time employees that have a flexible schedule. Some colleges provide co-op programs, in which students rotate between study and job to get real-world experience while still in school. In general, you’ll want to think about how many hours you want to work and how much supervision and training you can offer during those hours.
Here are some popular internship schedule examples:
- Part-Time School-Year Internship: During the school year, interns are often available for work schedules ranging from five to twenty hours per week.
- Part-Time Summer Internship: Some interns opt to work part-time over the summer, for example, 20 hours a week in June and July.
- Full-Time Semester Internship: Your intern may desire to take a break from their studies and immerse themselves fully in their chosen subject at times.
In general, unInternship with Pays must adhere to the academic calendar, but Internship with Pays allow you to schedule your time more freely. Other alternatives include bringing in a foreign graduate student for a year-long internship. In certain circumstances, you’ll be responsible for not only paying the intern a decent salary, but also for accommodation, transportation, and other expenses like healthcare.
Unpaid vs. Paid
Internships are divided into two categories: paid and unpaid. Nonprofits and businesses that follow the FLSA internship standards may provide unInternship with Pays. Internship with Pays are required by federal law to pay at or above the state’s minimum wage (current federal rate is $7.25 per hour).
- Internship with Pay
- UnInternship with Pay
Offering to pay interns comes with a slew of advantages. For starters, qualified students will be more interested in taking on your internship assignment. Additionally, as long as you follow your state’s minimum wage standards, you’ll be legal.
Interns might be compensated in two ways:
- Hourly Wage: In most states, the normal pay range for an internship is at or over minimum wage. According to ZipRecruiter, interns typically earn between $11 and $17 per hour. Industries where specific abilities are in great demand, such as internet security, may opt to pay extra for interns who can work in such areas.
- Internship Stipends are paid at the conclusion of the project, semester, or academic term. A student engaged in a Master’s degree program in information technology security, for example, may be employed as a summer intern to develop software that monitors incoming website and email traffic for spam. You may give them a stipend of $2,500 to be paid after the software application is in beta testing status.
Unless you meet the FLSA guidelines for an unInternship with Pay, interns, like any worker, must be paid at least minimum wage—even if they receive only a stipend. However, some states like Michigan and Minnesota allow employers to pay a lower “training wage” that applies to students and interns; however, the specifics vary by state.
Some internships do not need money since they are generally used to satisfy an academic requirement for which the student receives college credit. Several jurisdictions, however, have particular legislation governing when Credit in the classroom may be substituted for voluntary hours supplied by an intern. If you’re a nonprofit, for example, you may give the intern an unpaid volunteer position. For-profit enterprises, on the other hand, are subject to government regulations that decide whether or not you must pay the intern.
Internship Guidelines under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
When you hire an intern, you must follow federal labor rules as well as state workforce standards. This includes avoiding discrimination, preventing sexual harassment, according to tax regulations (if the intern is paid), adhering to the FLSA, and providing health insurance coverage, depending on the size of your company and the number of hours the intern works each week.
The following rules must be followed for an internship to be unpaid and fulfill the FLSA’s rigorous requirements:
- Make it obvious to the intern that the internship is unpaid, as is any job they undertake.
- Don’t guarantee or indicate that the internship will lead to a paid position for the intern.
- To supplement what the student learns in school, provide hands-on training and experiences.
- Ascertain if the work qualifies for course credit or is directly related to the intern’s major.
- Allow students to attend classes on their own time; fit their academic schedule.
- Match the start and finish dates of the internship to the academic quarter, semester, or break.
- Ascertain that the internship has a considerable academic advantage for the intern.
- Interns should not be hired to perform the duties of paid workers or to take their place.
Your interns, whether paid or unpaid, are covered by workers’ compensation. Workers’ compensation insurance is required in most states (excluding Texas) to protect employees who are injured on the job.
2. Locate Interns
You should start searching for an intern after you’ve determined on the sort of position you need to fill. Academic institutions that specialize in teaching students in certain skill sets are a wonderful place to start. If you’re searching for a Biomedical Research Intern, for example, you’ll probably seek for colleges that provide medical degrees.
Investigate the Local Schools
- Universities: Many universities have structured internship programs that provide students with college credit for their internship experience. Others manage Internship with Pay programs for students, and a few offer funds to support their learners participating in unInternship with Pays.
- Colleges: Check with your local community college to see if they offer an internship program. It’s an excellent location to locate a student intern even if they don’t. You may speak with a faculty member who teaches the courses you’d want your intern to take, such as Accounting 101 or Electrical Engineering, by contacting the career center or visiting the school. Furthermore, most local institutions provide a spot where you may advertise your internship, even if it’s only a note card pinned to an old-fashioned bulletin board in the cafeteria, computer lab, or student center.
- Local trade schools may offer similar programs to assist you find an intern in disciplines ranging from animal husbandry to welding in your region. These colleges may also have a bulletin board where you may advertise your internship position.
Post job openings on job boards.
You may discover students and recent college grads looking for internships on employment sites in addition to contacting relevant academic institutions. Indeed, there are specialized job sites that cater to student job placements, and many institutions have their own job boards that are maintained via the career center. If you have a large social media following, you may also notify students about your internship by publishing information on your website, Facebook page, or Instagram account.
- Free and paid job boards and job posting sites both enable you to post internship positions and monitor interns who apply using applicant tracking tools. By being able to track your intern outreach, you can prevent discrimination concerns.
- Internship Job Board: Internships.com is an example of a job board that specifically targets employers looking for interns and students looking for career experiences. Both paid and unInternship with Pay seekers can be found on this website; however, you have to sign up to post jobs and view student resumes. Other intern job boards include InternJobs.com, CollegeRecruiter.com, and LinkedIn.com.
Do you need more assistance in the recruiting of employees? Check out our comprehensive guide to hiring.
3. Review Resumes & Interview
Even though the intern will not be a permanent employee, you should nonetheless ask for and thoroughly evaluate their résumé. Make sure the intern has the abilities needed to complete the task at hand. While they may lack professional experience, they may highlight their abilities by include educational experiences on their resumes.
It is also vital to interview them before to employing them. Intern interviews may be conducted in the same way that you would interview a prospective employee: over the phone, through video, or in person. You should concentrate on the intern’s career path and the abilities required to succeed in the future throughout these conversations. Your open job could be able to assist them in learning and mastering the abilities they’ll need to seek a career in that industry.
It’s not unusual for faculty advisers to propose interns, or for just one or two interns to be available for the specific talents you’re looking for. In such situation, you may choose to bypass the complete interview process and instead focus on arranging your internship based on the requirements of the educational institution, such as an internship agreement.
4. Recruit an Intern
Now is the moment to employ the intern you’ve selected for the job. Just like you would with a full-time employee, an internship agreement—a kind of employment contract suited to the individual intern’s work assignment and duration—must be in place.
An internship usually starts with a contract between a student and an employer; this contract may be supported by a university and/or matched with the student’s academic program. It should at the very least include a description of the project or expected objectives, such as project deliverables (report, testing guide, training course, or data spreadsheet). It should also include if the internship is unpaid or paid, as well as the amount of the stipend or pay rate.
In addition, unlike a conventional labor agreement, it’s a good idea to establish the internship’s projected start and finish dates (aligned with the academic calendar), as well as a declaration indicating there is no promise or guarantee of employment after the internship is over. Getting signatures from all parties may assist guarantee that everyone is on the same page.
Sample Internship Agreement (PDF)
5. Reimburse your intern
If you’re employing an intern for the first time, you may be unsure how much to pay them. You may simply add the intern as a temporary employee to your payroll system if you already have paid staff. Gusto is an easy-to-use program that records employee wages, administers payroll taxes, and generates W-2 tax forms.
If you’re paying a lump sum stipend, another alternative is to execute the payment via your accounting software. For example, you may pay the stipend as an independent contractor and send the intern a 1099-Misc at the end of the year using QuickBooks.
Credit in the classroom
In certain situations, students might receive college credit instead of cash for their work with your business. The school will expect you to provide the intern with useful job experience that will help them pursue their study. Some even demand that you write a final report or evaluate the student’s work.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Hiring an Intern
Hiring an intern has the advantage of assisting you with project work. It may also assist you in identifying talent that you may hire after the student has graduated from college. The biggest argument of all is that it enhances your employment brand by allowing you to “give back” to your community by educating future employees and leaders.
Conclusion
The ideal method to employ an intern is to figure out ahead of time how much time you’re ready to devote to providing excellent learning experiences and what sort of talents a student might bring to your company in the little time they have. Then it’s only a matter of finding the right match and drafting an internship agreement.
The “where to hire interns” is a question that many people have been asking themselves. Here are 5 easy steps on how to hire an intern in your company.
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