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Do you want to know how to get interns? Your team defines your business. They are the driving force behind its successes and failures. An intern can be a great way to grow your team cost-effectively. You get the added benefit that interns are ready and open to learning the way you do things in your business. Hiring college students also offers this benefit.
Sounds good, right? The only barrier for you now is finding and hiring your intern. Before you head off to ZipRecruiter to start advertising for an intern, read through our guide here so you can set your business and your intern up to find success.
How to Get Interns
1. Get on ZipRecruiter
Learning how to get interns involves knowing which platforms to use. ZipRecruiter is the #1 job site in the United States, and it can match you with your ideal candidate. When you create a profile for your company, you’ll have the chance to create a detailed job description. Specify what you’re looking for, then ZipRecruiter will match you with qualified applicants.
You can invite them to apply, increasing their chances of seeing your job posting!
2. Define What They’ll Be Doing
Just like hiring an employee, you should have a good understanding of what your intern will be doing. You can use them to do some busy work for your more experienced employees.
If you want, they can experiment with new ideas you aren’t sure will give you a good ROI or help guide you on how to reach a younger audience. Just make sure you know what they’ll be doing. That way, any potential intern will have a good idea if your internship will give them the experience they need.
3. Think About Skills
Now that you know what you want them to do, think about what skills they need to have. For example, if you want an intern to run your social media, you should hire an intern who already knows a good deal about social media platforms. You won’t have to teach them from scratch in that case!
4. Decide on Benefits
What are you offering your intern in return for their time? A little pay can go a long way for an intern, especially in large cities where the cost of living is high. If you are looking for an unpaid intern, make sure you think about other benefits you could offer (free lunches, reduced travel costs, etc.) and what you’re going to teach them to make your internship worth it for them.
Should you want to know how to get interns, you need to list these benefits in your job description. If you do this, the position will look more attractive.
5. Outline Your Hiring Process
Think about how casual or formal your hiring process will be. Do you want to simply give your preferred intern a call and invite them in for a few hours, or do you want a much more formal interview process?
Remember that you need to balance your desire to figure out how to get interns with the need to keep costs down. So, having a 5-step interview process probably won’t be an effective strategy. In most cases, it’s best to mimic your normal hiring process, since it will be aligned with what interns should expect from job interviews in your industry.
6. Write Your Internship Ad
Write a job description and list of desired skills and attributes you can post online to attract potential interns. Remember to include things such as their responsibilities, anything you’ll teach them, and opportunities they’ll have to work on certain activities or projects. In addition, you should mention the time commitments you expect them to make, any location restrictions, and any pay and/or benefits you’ll offer. If you need more help, see our article on how to create a job posting here.
Finding Interns
There are only two steps involved in finding an intern now that you’ve got all of the details out of the way. You need to advertise your internship and then hire the right person for it.
Where to advertise your internship:
- A job posting on ZipRecruiter and similar job sites (here is a list of sites where you can post for free)
- On your social media profiles
- Contact local colleges and/or high schools
- Register with colleges as an official internship provider if your industry is one that usually requires summer internships during college programs
- Post on local student boards
Once you’ve gathered your applications, it’s time to interview! Sort through the applications and only interview the interns that meet your job description requirements. Follow your hiring process and then offer the intern you wish to hire a formal offer letter or contract within a day or two of their interview to secure them. Voila! You’ve just hired your first intern!
Hire Your Interns
Wondering how to get interns can be daunting, but it’s really not all that different from hiring any other employee. Once you’ve got the details ironed out, all you need to do is create your job listing on ZipRecruiter and wait for the applications to roll in. If you offer this first intern a great experience, there’s no reason why you can’t continue offering internships so you can get great young talent for your company.
