Hiring Interns
For a long time now, small scale businesses all over America have been employing college students and new graduates as job interns in their company. Now even the large businesses are doing this as well. Interns are given lower salaries which help the company save money. Yet even for a cheaper wage, an intern can perform very well. The young and new ones (especially the student interns) tend to be more motivated and willing to learn. You can get maximum performance even from an intern, just as long as you hire and manage the person right.
Yes, the key is to hire and manage right. If you don’t, they can cause lots of problems in your business operations. Some businesses make a mistake of hiring interns without developing any training plan for them. It is in preparing them that you can ensure their productive stay in your company. Success with job interns requires you to not only find the right ones but to also come up with a system that will fully tap your intern’s skills and ability for the sake of your business.
A good support system would recruit, train, and manage interns the way regular employees are supported. A strong thrust on training will prepare students for more complex work with maximum results.
Interns can be a great asset to one’s company. They can help other employees be even more productive by relieving them of lower level work so that they can work on the more important projects. Interns can give your company’s present employees a venue by which they can discover, practice, and further their supervisory skills.
There are many things interns can do for your business. They can work on (and follow up) prospects and business leads. They can also be trusted with writing and facilitating written correspondence like chores and press releases. Interns can plan and schedule events. They can be left with company publicity planning and advertising placements. They can do any kind of company research and be assigned for industry news monitoring and reporting.
They can also assist with various kinds of award submissions, company presentations, designs, charting and graphing, and material development (brochure, posters, leaflets). They can be assigned with filing and various kinds of paperwork. They can also be the ones to recruit the next batches of interns.
If you want to get hold of a complete program package for internship, you can find Intern Toolkit. It helps companies design and manage a successful and efficient internship program. Businesses will find it very helpful as it contains a detailed and well laid out program for planning, recruiting, screening, managing, and training. Unit cost is dependent on size (of the business). Free information is also available from Intern Toolkit (site), also internship feasibility tests, and lists of tasks for interns in .pdf file.
When seeking interns, you may use online services which post intern resumes. In those sites (and in others as well) you may also be able to post job placements for interns. Make sure to check intern resumes carefully to know who are better fitted for your company.