any college students used to spend lazy summer afternoons at the beach or
working at amusement parks. Now, it is more likely that undergraduate college
students will spend the summer working in an experiential education program,
receiving performance reviews along the way and a job offer when they finish.
College internships make up the largest segment of these types of programs, and
they have become increasingly popular as a strategic method for recruiting
students prior to their graduation. Managers favor internships for building
pipelines of talent and like the opportunity to "audition" the students for a
period of time prior to extending offers, according to Steve Pollock, president
of Wet Feet, a recruitment solutions provider and research company based in San
Francisco.
"More companies are de-emphasizing full-time hiring and emphasizing the
internship program and the subsequent conversion rates of students to full-time
hires at the end of the summer," Pollock says.
The desired conversion rate from internships to full-time hires is 50 percent,
according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania-based information resource organization on the employment of the
college-educated. In 2004, NACE members reported a 45 percent conversion rate
and a 35 percent rate in 2005.
Wet Feet recently surveyed students who had completed internships to gather
their opinions as to what constituted the best program. While the priority goal
of employers is gaining new hires, students said that their No. 1 internship
objective was gaining experience and knowledge, and that receiving a job offer
was a lesser priority.
The survey reported that less than half of all undergraduate students had
accepted their end-of-summer offers as of November. The data also showed that
programs that are designed around student objectives had a better than average
conversion rate.
"Real" Work Wanted
The students defined their optimal learning experience as one that provided
actual tasks or work that was suitable for exempt personnel. They wanted to be
exposed to the real work environment and wanted to know how their work related
to the overall success of the business. Pollock says that best-practice
companies have a program management team that helps to shape the projects and
uses a pre-approval process for the selection of valid assignments.
Kaiser Permanente, based in Oakland, California, runs multiple internship
programs. Each program is targeted toward a different group of students based
upon their academic major and the company’s demographic hiring goals. The
diversity program targets high-potential students early in their college careers
with the assistance of Inroads, a St. Louis-based training and development firm
for minority youth.
Kaiser hires the students for consecutive summers during a two- to six-year
period, according to Carolyn Dallas, manager of youth programs for the Southern
California region.
"Our interns receive exposure to real work and to work outside of their
internship area via rotational programs, ‘lunch and learn’ sessions and job
shadowing," Dallas says.
She says that the firm’s project approval process requires the supervisor to
complete a profile each year describing the function and the project prior to
the student commencing the work. The managers are also required to sequentially
increase the complexity of the project each summer that the student returns for
an internship.
Dallas says that they extend the real work experience by conducting performance
reviews with each intern twice during the summer and requiring graduating
interns to present a summary of their projects to a panel of company executives.
"The quality of the educational experience has been a major factor in our
results," Dallas says. "We have had a 72 percent conversion rate in Southern
California and an 80 percent conversion rate in Northern California from this
program."
Deutsche Bank has an internal staff of 18 to support domestic internship
programs for both undergraduate and MBA students. Last year the bank hired 350
U.S. interns, which was 30 percent more than the prior year, according to
Kristina Peters, director and head of regional recruiting for the Americas, who
is based in the firm’s U.S. headquarters in New York. Her team is measured by
the number of offers that are extended at the end of every summer.
In order to bring more of a "real work" experience to students interning in
areas that require licensing, Peters says that the curriculum includes simulated
trading competitions in which the students are scored on their results as if
they were working with real money and accounts.
Social Responsibility
IBM, headquartered in Armonk, New York, hires 1,500 to 1,800 students each year
into business-unit-focused internship programs. The "Extreme Blue" program,
which is composed of teams of computer science and computer engineering majors,
undertakes actual research and development projects each year under the guidance
of an IBM team lead.
"Those projects have actually produced new products and solutions, and several
have produced patents," said Marilyn Mayo, IBM’s program manager for university
relations and recruiting. She adds that the goal is to "wow" interns and that
her team’s target is to achieve 70 percent of the firm’s college graduate hiring
requirements through internships and co-op programs.
IBM’s program also includes a curriculum covering social responsibility and
employs a webcast format with guest speakers who discuss community support and
volunteerism. Deutsche Bank’s curriculum includes involving the company’s
interns in a community service project such as building homes for Habitat for
Humanity.
Crucial Relationships
Students participating in the Wet Feet survey said that their impressions of
people within the company were a critical factor in terms of their decision to
accept offers following an internship. They listed both their relationships with
their managers and exposure to senior management in the company as important
elements of great internship programs.
"The best programs all provide mentors to the interns who coach them
independently of their manager and opportunities to interface with senior
management," Steve Pollock says.
IBM provides management training for those supervisors with interns. Some
companies involve a blend of networking functions and social events to give the
interns exposure to people within the organization on different levels.
Mayo says that there is an expression at IBM that reflects the increased
competition to acquire the best interns and convert them to full time hires:
"Recruit them once, but hire them twice."
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