So, you could really use some extra help around the office, but your budget has other ideas. Well, there’s a way to beef up your staff without breaking the bank. Go back to school. No, not to further your education, but somebody else’s.
Colleges and universities regularly offer their students internships with local businesses and organizations. Students earn academic credit by spending a period of time working in their field of study. They gain practical experience, apply classroom theory to real-life situations and build their resume. The company offers the internship, in turn, gets low- or no-cost help.
If the idea of a student internship conjures up images of a large corporation, take heart, no business is too small for a college intern.
“Sometimes a smaller company offers an even greater opportunity,” said Roger Herman, a Greensboro, North Carolina-based certified management consultant, public speaker and author of the books, Turbulence, and Keeping Good People. He and his wife Joyce Gioia have been using college interns for 15 years.
In a large organization, the student intern may be confined to a specific task. He or she may never get a broader view of how the different pieces of the company work together. But with a small-business, the student intern may not only see how the organization as a whole operates, but may very well have a hand in helping run its various functions.
The time is also good for approaching a college or university about setting up an internship program, according to Herman. Schools are putting more emphasis on practical learning applications at the same time some of the larger organizations are downsizing. The upshot is many schools are challenged to find enough internships for their students.
To set up an internship program with your company, contact the internship coordinator or placement office of your local college or university. If the school doesn’t have someone specifically responsible for placing student interns, call the head of the department that most closely matches your need. For instance, if you need someone to help with your marketing, call the marketing department head. If you need someone to do chemical research, call the head of the chemistry department.
Another option is to offer your business as a “laboratory” of sorts for class projects. Herman and Gioia recently had three different teams of students from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, doing marketing plans for their business as part of the students’ project for a marketing class.
“Our cost? A little bit of time,” Herman said.
If you don’t have a college nearby, tap your local high school for office help. Many high schools have cooperative education or distributive education programs where they work for credit toward graduation. These programs operate differently than internships because the work doesn’t relate specifically to students’ academic work. Another option is to contact colleges about setting up a summer internship with a student who lives in your area.
With a student intern, you invest time, and sometimes money. But the return is the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping prepare a young adult for the workforce. Another benefit is the perspective a student brings to an organization.
“It’s a good way to keep yourself fresh because you’re working with young people with a lot of questions and answering those questions keeps you thinking,” Herman
said.
And, if things work out, you may be training your next full-time employee. It’s not uncommon for graduating students to return to the place of their internship for their first job.
