Many companies approach hiring interns all wrong. Hiring interns for your company means more than just finding someone to get coffee or run errands for full-time employees. Interns can be the future of your company. Last year, nearly 60 percent of internsjoined their companies as full-time hires. Properly run internship programs become invaluable recruiting pipelines because they provide the company with field-tested employees. You don’t have to worry if the interns can do the job or will fit into the company culture; they’ve already proven their abilities. Hiring the best interns, however, isn’t always easy and making sure they accept your full-time offer can be even more difficult ―especially if they’re talented. So here are three of the best ways to find the right candidates for your internship program and ensure that they accept a full-time offer if and when you make one. Seek out creativity when hiring interns It is 2013, so why are you still hiring like it’s 1980? If you want creative interns, you probably need to consider creative ways of attracting them to your company. You need big ideas to keep your company moving forward, and people with vision and enthusiasm are attracted to companies willing to take calculated risks. Hackathons have become one of the more visible and creative ways that technology companies are recruiting top technology talent. Evernote, for example hosted its first Hackathon in Koreain an effort to recruit top Korean students. One advertising firm had interns apply to their position using the mobile app Draw Something. Candidates with the most creative drawings were selected to move forward in the process. Tests like these allow employers to see the practical and creative skills of potential interns. Hackathons, for example, push potential interns to quickly solve problems and work within teams, sometimes alongside full-time employees. Social media is another great way to attract interns. If you are not using social media as part of your intern hiring strategy, then you are missing out, as 26 percent of college students are using Twitter. Using media directed at certain schools or course focuses can help to quickly create attention for your company. Consider paying your interns With the high costs of hiring full-time employees, bringing on unpaid interns sounds like a magic bullet, but this is far from true. You are likely to come across hoards of potential interns who are begging for experience and wouldn’t hesitate to work for free. But going this route can have detrimental effects on your internship program and can put your company in legal hot water. With the job market in a shaky place, it is becoming more common for postgraduates to be taking internships with potential employers. These postgraduates have real expenses, and taking unpaid internships can deter many of them from joining your company. Even if they do accept, 3 to 6 months of no pay can put them in a very difficult financial situation and may ruin the internship period. Receiving a paycheck also gives your interns a better sense that the company values their skills. Furthermore, from a legal standpoint, it is extremely difficult to have unpaid interns these days, and many companies are getting burned for running free intern programs. Since 2011, there has been a surge in litigation surrounding the use of unpaid interns. The most recent example is the suit against Fox Searchlight Pictures, which is a huge blow to the media and entertainment industry that has traditionally been reliant upon unpaid interns. Apparently, the 2008 “500 Days of Summer” and 2010 “Black Swan” films used unpaid interns for secretarial and janitorial support. Not exactly a learning experience. Most attorneys would recommend hiring an intern as a part-time employee with salary at least equal to minimum wage. Part-time employees generally have limited or no company benefits, such as health benefits, vacation and sick time, paid holidays, and unemployment compensation, unless required by state labor laws and/or company policies. Treat your interns like full-time employees Like any employee, interns want to feel like they are a part of the company. Many employers adopt the mentality that their interns are not real employees and therefore slack on making them feel like part of the team or adopting standard legal practices to onboard them. One of the biggest errors that companies make when bringing on interns (especially in small organizations like startups), is to not properly inform their full-time employees how to treat interns. This may sound juvenile, but a one-hour informational session can make all the difference. One of the biggest topics to cover is how the interns will be managed. One of the biggest complaints of interns in 2012 (other than having to work for free) was that they were given menial tasks by their supervisor. Give your interns real tasks and challenges. This also helps you as an employer determine whether the intern can handle real challenges as a full-time employee. Many companies also neglect to have their interns sign up to the usual legalities of part-time or full-time employees. This puts your company at legal risk and can misalign expectations. When onboarding employees, you should at a minimum ensure they agree to the following: Offer letter Invention assignment &confidentiality agreement Equipment agreements Employee handbook &training (safety, harassment, etc) if offered to full-time employees. The documents you use for interns, however, cannot just be standard employment agreements; they must be specifically geared towards your interns. For example, you must specifically state in your offer letters that the internship is not a guarantee of employment. Nurture your internship program and it will produce results Hiring the right intern candidates for your company is crucial. Approximately 62 percent of full-time employees recruited through an internship program are still employedby the company five years later. This is almost a 15 precent bump in retention over other candidates hired from outside sources. Having a great internship program is no easy task, but if done correctly can become a competitive advantage that you will not regret. 據Venturebeat網站6月8日報道——很多公司對處理實習生招募的想法完全錯誤。爲你的公司招募實習生，不僅僅意味着找一些人來爲正式員工買咖啡或是跑腿，實習生可以成爲你公司的未來。 去年，有將近60%的實習生轉正爲正式員工。 準確地實施實習生計劃變成了積極珍貴的招募渠道，因爲公司可以實地考察這些員工。你不必需要擔心實習生是否能做這份工作，或者是否能適應公司的文化；實習生早已經證明了他們的能力。 然而，招募到最好的實習生並不總是容易的，而且要他們接受你的全職僱傭可能有更大的困難———特別是如果他們有才能的話。所以這裏有三個最好的辦法，爲你的實習生計劃找到適合的候選人，萬一你找到了，或者你已經找到時，他們能接受正式員工的使命。 招募有創意力的實習生 現在是2013年,那爲什麼你們還依然像現在是1980年來招募呢？如果你想招到有創意的實習生，你可能需要有創意的方法來吸引他們。你需要大創意來保持公司前進，有眼界和熱情的實習生樂意承擔一些預計中的風險。 黑客馬拉松（Hackathon）已經成爲技術公司在招募頂尖技術天才的方法之一。比如，印象筆記（Evernote）在韓國舉行它第一次的黑客馬拉松，努力招募頂尖韓國學生。在一所廣告公司，有實習生使用手機應用程序畫畫猜詞（Draw Something）來申請他們的職位。在這個過程中，畫作最具創意的候選人將被篩選出來。 像這樣的測試使僱主看到有潛力的實習生，他們具有實踐性和創意的技巧。比如，黑客馬拉松推動有潛力的實習生快速解決問題，在團隊中工作，有時與正式員工一起。 社會化媒介是另一個好辦法來吸引實習生。如果你沒有將使用社會化媒介作爲實習生招募策略之一，你將會失去那26%在使用推特的大學生。使用定位於某些學校或課程重點的媒介有利於迅速製造公司吸引力。 考慮給實習生薪水 在支付正式員工高薪的同時，發展無薪實習生聽起來像是一個魔術彈。但這事實遠非如此。你可能遇到有潛力的實習生，他們渴求經驗，不會猶豫去免費工作。但是沿着這條路線，可能會對你的實習生計劃有壞影響，並且會將公司置於法律的水深火熱中。 研究生接受一份來自有潛力僱主的實習，這已經越來越普遍了。這些研究生有實際的支出，沒有薪水的實習會阻止大部分研究生加入你的公司。即使他們真的接受了，3到6個月的無薪將他們置於經濟十分困難的處境，這可能會毀了這段實習期。獲得薪水也給實習生一個更好的印象，公司承認了他們的技術。 進一步說，從法律的角度看，現在接受無薪實習的確十分困難。許多公司引火上升，實施免費實習生計劃。從2011年以來，關於無薪實習的訴訟在激增。最近的一個例子是，福克斯探照燈（Fox Searchlight Pictures）這家在媒體和娛樂有着強大影響力的公司，它早有無薪實習的傳統。顯然，2008年的《和薩莫的500天》和2010年的《黑天鵝》電影，福克斯利用無薪實習生來做祕書和門衛工作。這不完全是一個學習的過程。 大部分律師建議，將招募實習生當做招募有薪水的兼職，至少與最低薪水持平。除非地方勞動法和公司規章要求，兼職員工通常沒有公司福利，或者有很少的福利，比如健康福利，休息日和病假，帶薪假日和失業補償。 像對待正式員工一樣對待實習生 像所有的員工一樣，實習生希望能感受到他們也是公司的一份子。許多僱主擁有這樣的心理，他們認爲實習生不是真正的員工，因此忽略了使實習生感受爲公司的一份子，或是讓實習生接受正規法定培訓。 其中公司犯的最大一個錯誤是當發展實習生時（尤其是小公司，如創業公司），沒有正確地通知正式員工該如何對待實習生。這可能聽起來幼稚，但一個小時的信息會議讓一切都不一樣。2012年最大的抱怨之一（除了免費工作）是上級給實習生低級任務。給實習生真正的任務和挑戰。這也會幫助僱主決定實習生是否能像正式員工一般應付真正的挑戰。 許多公司也忽略了讓實習生簽訂正常的法律協議，那些兼職和正式員工也會簽訂的。這會將你的公司置於法律的危險中，並有錯誤的預期。當招募實習生時，你應該至少確定他們同意一下協議： 聘請通知信 發明轉讓&保密協議 設備協議 提供給正式員工的員工手冊及培訓（安全，騷擾等） 然而，這些爲實習生準備的文檔並不能只是正規的僱傭協議；僱主一定要對實習生有特別的準備。比如，你必須特別在聘請通知信中指出，實習不保證僱傭。 培養你的實習生計劃，這一定會有回報 對你的公司而言，招募合適的候選實習生是必要的。在5年之後，通過實習生計劃僱傭的正式員工，將近62%依然留在公司裏。這對從外面渠道招募的其他候選人，幾乎保持有將近15%的衝擊。擁有一個好實習生計劃不是容易的任務，但如果做得好，你不會後悔的，這將是公司一項有競爭力的優點。
