You’re thinking you could use an extra pair of hands around the office this summer but can’t afford to hire more staff right now. Well, an internship program may be just what your business needs.
It’s an inexpensive way to help lighten the load, bring in a fresh perspective and give back at the same time, say small-business experts.
“It allows you to accomplish more and spend less, especially if your business doesn’t have the budget for extra staff,” said Larina Kase, president of Performance & Success Coaching LLC, a Philadelphia-based business consultancy.
It also can be a good recruitment tool, particularly if the student intern is close to graduating and a position opens up at your company.
But if you just want to take advantage of cheap labor, don’t bother.
“The internship should be a win-win situation for both the company and the intern,” said Irene de Gasparis, president of Manhattan-based Interns for You Inc., which assists companies in setting up and managing their internship programs.
There’s a lot of time involved in implementing an internship program, including tapping into colleges and universities to recruit interns and screening them, de Gasparis said.
Plus, many colleges and universities have recommended guidelines they would like firms to follow.
For instance, at Dowling College on Long Island in New York, the recommendation is that the employer provide some preliminary training when the intern arrives and assign or identify someone who can serve as a contact throughout the internship with the student’s adviser, said Brian Jeran, Dowling’s director of career services.
Also, within the first two weeks of an internship, the student must meet with his or her college adviser and reporting supervisor to outline learning objectives, Jeran said. At the end of the internship, the employer gets an evaluation form to fill out, he said.
The bottom line is that the college wants to see that the intern got some applied learning experience, which is the whole point of an internship.
In fact, there are clear guidelines you must follow to ensure that you are not in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, particularly since many internships are unpaid.
Your goal is to find the best applicant, Kase said. Ask the student for a resume and at least one personal and one professional reference, as well as a reference from a professor, she recommended. In addition, ask about his or her experience and career goals.
“The only difference is that this ’employee’ generally requires more hand-holding. So don’t sign on for it unless you have the time to give, said Debbie Regan, a location agent for the film and print industries who has an internship program and works with Long Island Works Coalition, which connects companies with interns.
“We’re on top of them,” said Regan, president of Debbie Regan Locations Ltd. in New York. “I fine-tune them constantly.” She has to, considering that her interns do everything from setting up appointments for location scouts to coming on actual shoots.
“It’s not fax, copy and file,” Regan said. “They do real stuff.”
And that doesn’t include fetching coffee, which, by the way, you should be doing yourself.
