Point of Internships

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m the manager of a rising senior undergrad intern (business major) at a Fortune 500. We have about 100 summer interns in a 10-week corporate program.

It does much more for them than it does for me.

I’m a little burnt out and have been doing it for 5+ years so I probably won’t do it next year.

What they get:

Their first exposure to a white collar, desk job.
An understanding of how different major departments work.
Learning a bunch of industry/corporate acronyms (pmp, saas, etc)
An immediate understanding of how important soft skills and internal politics are.
An understanding of diverse corporate backgrounds and career paths.
The details of a particular department (finance, hr, etc)
A sense of whether or not they’d want to work at the company or in the industry after graduation.

We are a company that doesn’t make an offer at the end of the summer, they have to apply to something open in the spring of graduation. But, they tend to get hired faster than a regular undergraduate.

What’s the point of hiring 100 interns and then not making offers?

You put them through a 10 week interview and in theory a bunch performed well…so it seems like a waste of time and money to not try to hire top performers.

[Anonymous]

Pp here of Fortune 500. All the benefits that it does in terms of PR and being able to hire people after graduation is why the company does it. Also, our competitors do it.

That said, I’m totally sick of it and I’m not gonna do it anymore after this year. The kids are sweet, but I’m getting older and I’m tired of the corporate performance/rah rah aspect of it.

Not that they don’t have the typical college student skills, but since they’re not doing mathematical modeling for me, there’s only so much they can really contribute in 10 weeks. But I think I’m helping them with their career, which is why I started doing it in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pp here of Fortune 500. All the benefits that it does in terms of PR and being able to hire people after graduation is why the company does it. Also, our competitors do it.

That said, I’m totally sick of it and I’m not gonna do it anymore after this year. The kids are sweet, but I’m getting older and I’m tired of the corporate performance/rah rah aspect of it.

Not that they don’t have the typical college student skills, but since they’re not doing mathematical modeling for me, there’s only so much they can really contribute in 10 weeks. But I think I’m helping them with their career, which is why I started doing it in the first place.

I still don’t get the logic of not giving offers to top performers. You are going through the cost and effort to hire 100 summer kids…and then going through a bunch of efffort to hire FT when you could have circumvented all that by simply giving offers to top interns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp here of Fortune 500. All the benefits that it does in terms of PR and being able to hire people after graduation is why the company does it. Also, our competitors do it.

That said, I’m totally sick of it and I’m not gonna do it anymore after this year. The kids are sweet, but I’m getting older and I’m tired of the corporate performance/rah rah aspect of it.

Not that they don’t have the typical college student skills, but since they’re not doing mathematical modeling for me, there’s only so much they can really contribute in 10 weeks. But I think I’m helping them with their career, which is why I started doing it in the first place.

I still don’t get the logic of not giving offers to top performers. You are going through the cost and effort to hire 100 summer kids…and then going through a bunch of efffort to hire FT when you could have circumvented all that by simply giving offers to top interns.

DP who hires interns but doesn't give full time offers at the end of summer. (Not a F500 company) We simply aren't growing or having the staff attrition to justify hiring multiple new grads every year. My department of 12, a support function, gets one intern most summers. We have one entry-level role on the team. That turns over every 2-3 yrs. When I need to fill it, I contact our recent interns and have always been able to hire one. We do have very successful people throughout the company who started as interns, and connections throughout the industry from people who interned with us.

Companies do internships for a variety of reasons, as already mentioned. A constant flow of immediate new hires is only useful to some companies.

[Anonymous]

You act like I’m in charge of what out Fortune 500 company does. I’m not.

I’m just reporting what the company does.

Also, let’s be real, if we hired all 100 interns, that’s a budget of like $10-15m a year, assuming a salary of 100k in salary and benefits costs. Instead, we are paying them $20/ hour for 10 weeks, and each department pays the $10-15k that is. Not the same level of corporate expenditures. Also we don’t have 100 entry level positions open like that, it’s not consulting where we bill it out to others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You act like I’m in charge of what out Fortune 500 company does. I’m not.

I’m just reporting what the company does.

Also, let’s be real, if we hired all 100 interns, that’s a budget of like $10-15m a year, assuming a salary of 100k in salary and benefits costs. Instead, we are paying them $20/ hour for 10 weeks, and each department pays the $10-15k that is. Not the same level of corporate expenditures. Also we don’t have 100 entry level positions open like that, it’s not consulting where we bill it out to others.

Nobody necessarily expects 100 offers…but if you give out say 10 then it would make sense to give to your top 10 interns.

F500 is obviously a big disparity in companies…it could be Google or it could be Foot Locker.

$20/hour isn’t much for interns especially if the FT positions are $100k. Your company has a strange strategy.

[Anonymous]

Free labor for companies and to weed out the poor who actually have to earn money over the summer.

Rich get richer.

[Anonymous]

My husband supervises engineering interns (competitive pay). It is partially then finding and developing talent to hire later. The students can do some lab work and other tasks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Free labor for companies and to weed out the poor who actually have to earn money over the summer.

Rich get richer.

Very few internships are unpaid these days.

[Anonymous]

At my F500 we bring in around 70-100 interns each year in North America. We use it as early career pipeline development - some will get a return offer for a second internship if they are still in school when the summer is over, some will get full time offers, some won’t.

For the co-eds it’s excellent experience for everything that ISN’T covered in college - navigating corporate hierarchy, social systems, managing and executing internal communications, hands-on experience with company software and analytics tools, managing group work and peer relationships, etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp here of Fortune 500. All the benefits that it does in terms of PR and being able to hire people after graduation is why the company does it. Also, our competitors do it.

That said, I’m totally sick of it and I’m not gonna do it anymore after this year. The kids are sweet, but I’m getting older and I’m tired of the corporate performance/rah rah aspect of it.

Not that they don’t have the typical college student skills, but since they’re not doing mathematical modeling for me, there’s only so much they can really contribute in 10 weeks. But I think I’m helping them with their career, which is why I started doing it in the first place.

I still don’t get the logic of not giving offers to top performers. You are going through the cost and effort to hire 100 summer kids…and then going through a bunch of efffort to hire FT when you could have circumvented all that by simply giving offers to top interns.

DP who hires interns but doesn't give full time offers at the end of summer. (Not a F500 company) We simply aren't growing or having the staff attrition to justify hiring multiple new grads every year. My department of 12, a support function, gets one intern most summers. We have one entry-level role on the team. That turns over every 2-3 yrs. When I need to fill it, I contact our recent interns and have always been able to hire one. We do have very successful people throughout the company who started as interns, and connections throughout the industry from people who interned with us.

Companies do internships for a variety of reasons, as already mentioned. A constant flow of immediate new hires is only useful to some companies.

mine have had a variety of paid internship experiences, most of them very selective. None of the places hire interns ever. In the fields my kids want, a doctorate is required for most positions and the internships are R&D based under phDs, for experience and networking in the industry that will help later down the road not for a job right after college. Bachelors are not often hired at these places; only MS and phD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp here of Fortune 500. All the benefits that it does in terms of PR and being able to hire people after graduation is why the company does it. Also, our competitors do it.

That said, I’m totally sick of it and I’m not gonna do it anymore after this year. The kids are sweet, but I’m getting older and I’m tired of the corporate performance/rah rah aspect of it.

Not that they don’t have the typical college student skills, but since they’re not doing mathematical modeling for me, there’s only so much they can really contribute in 10 weeks. But I think I’m helping them with their career, which is why I started doing it in the first place.

I still don’t get the logic of not giving offers to top performers. You are going through the cost and effort to hire 100 summer kids…and then going through a bunch of efffort to hire FT when you could have circumvented all that by simply giving offers to top interns.

DP who hires interns but doesn't give full time offers at the end of summer. (Not a F500 company) We simply aren't growing or having the staff attrition to justify hiring multiple new grads every year. My department of 12, a support function, gets one intern most summers. We have one entry-level role on the team. That turns over every 2-3 yrs. When I need to fill it, I contact our recent interns and have always been able to hire one. We do have very successful people throughout the company who started as interns, and connections throughout the industry from people who interned with us.

Companies do internships for a variety of reasons, as already mentioned. A constant flow of immediate new hires is only useful to some companies.

mine have had a variety of paid internship experiences, most of them very selective. None of the places hire interns ever. In the fields my kids want, a doctorate is required for most positions and the internships are R&D based under phDs, for experience and networking in the industry that will help later down the road not for a job right after college. Bachelors are not often hired at these places; only MS and phD.

Is this a company? Just curious for an example of what you are referencing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interns can become prescreened employees who contribute in day 1 and are cheaper to recruit.

This!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they just do ''busy work'' or work that has to be redone by full-time staff, what is the point of hiring interns?

Especially during the summer when things in most industries I can think of (excluding travel & hospitality) slow down. What do companies do with during the other 9 months of summer when business is actually busy?

Also, seems companies are giving less return offers due to budget restraints

I have a sophomore engineering major who's being flown all over to various sites and working on real technical problems while making bank this summer. For a 19 year old, it's been a very eventful internship and I'd imagine it'll be very helpful for when they graduate.

Which sort of position offers this?

[Anonymous]

I know someone who got a 6 month internship at The Economist. They paid travel and lunch money for 6 months that was it.

Now, some 12 yrs later this person has been a journalist posted in several parts of the world and now heads up an entire section as Editor.