How to Use Free Interns Effectively

The summer is quickly approaching and as an employer this means the opportunity for you to hire eager college students who have the time to take on a free internship. Interns are great because it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. The idea is that the student will get valuable real-world professional knowledge and in return you will have the opportunity to be a mentor and have someone join your staff for free. However it’s important to understand that a free internship is not an opportunity to offload all of your busy work onto another person. In fact, according to the Department of Labor, your free internship program should meet a number of criteria to maintain a legal status. For instance, the intern can’t just displace regular employees, but actually has to have some sort of training program under existing staff. The experience should be a rewarding one, and must somewhat mirror what would take place in an academic environment.

As a foreword I’ll just say that in my personal belief interns should be paid. The internship is designed to mirror what it’s like to actually work in that industry. As a student you should be gaining an understand of what your work will be like once you graduate and that includes getting a paycheck. Many companies pay their interns, especially if they are a larger corporation or the internship is 40+ hours a week. I suggest considering free interns if your business is a startup, nonprofit, or for some reason doesn’t have the operating capital to fund the additional payroll. In my company, we are a nonprofit with a limited budget. We can’t afford to hire additional employees, but can offer perks like free transportation and college credits. If you can’t pay your interns, think of other ways to compensate their time like training programs, college credits, and networking opportunities.

Now that we have an understanding of what a free internship should entail, let’s see how we can use free interns effectively. Here are some tips when using your free interns.

Develop a comprehensive program

Have a program in mind for the interns before you actually hire them. Not having a plan or a program could actually waste more time in your workday because you’ll have to figure out things for them to do. Having a developed program that’s blocked out on a weekly basis will allow you to parse their work in a meaningful way.

Remember, the internship should teach the student something. In college we learn all the buzz words and meanings for basic business lingo, but application is usually limited to class projects that typically have little to no real world impact. This will be their first venture into the reality of the professional world, and it should be educational and realistic.

Use their strengths, hold them accountable

Yes, you might have to go over with your interns how to get a coffee order correct, but they will be intelligent enough to learn from mistakes and get it right. When you are developing an internship program think about the student’s strengths. In media and communication there’s a good chance that they are more in touch with cutting edge popular culture. Younger millennials are also likely to have their finger on the pulse when it comes to new phone apps or software that could assist your business, so make sure to include them into your strategy, especially if you are trying to appeal to a younger demographic. Determine what the intern is good at, and have them work on projects where their results are quantifiable and in a way that they can be held accountable, Hand holding will most likely be necessary if the intern has no real world experience, but you should have faith in their abilities to learn new tasks quickly.

Give them insight into the overall business strategy

Internships are exciting for most students. There’s a good likelihood that the student has worked, but not in a job that aligns with their major. One of the worst things for any employee is to not understand how their work fits in the overall strategy of the company. If you want to spark innovation, the intern needs to understand how their work affects the rest of the business. Keep tasks limited to intern-oriented projects, but make them meaningful and explain how their contribution helps the overall strategy. This will make the intern take more pride and care in the work they are producing and give them a feeling of fulfillment.

In the end, if you are designing your internship calendar and are having a hard time allocating work for them, maybe your company doesn’t need free interns. Remember that students in school are just like those in the professional world. Real people, with real opinions, and good ideas. As someone who started off as an intern, I’ve seen a lot of management mistakes made by superiors when I was in my early 20’s. Now that I actually have the experience I can say with certainty that resources were wasted. Instead of looking at the internship as extra work, you should be looking at it as an opportunity to utilize someone’s skills who’s excited and capable of learning. Additionally, the feeling of being a mentor is rewarding emotionally and professionally.

If you are looking for free interns try to connect to a local university or college. There are usually opportunities for businesses to link to the school’s job board, or work directly with campus recruitment. Use these above strategies and a free internship will be rewarding for all parties involved.