The Power of Internships: How Business Should Use Them for Recruiting

For those in hiring positions, it’s no secret that the process of recruiting the right employees can be difficult, time consuming, and ineffective. Between hours of glancing over resumes and hours of conducting interviews, one still has to take a gamble when actually hiring an employee. While the hiring process can work sometimes, other times it can prove to be an ineffective way of finding employees.

A natural way to bypass the hit or miss nature of the traditional hiring process is by utilizing internships to find and recruit the right employees — especially through college programs such as MBA internships and opportunities. While internships have proved to be a potent way to find employees that fit in one’s business, many organizations have been reluctant to take advantage of the various ways that internships can help them find the perfect employees.

Gaining a deeper understanding of the benefits that internships have can make it easier to take the leap and implement them into one’s organization’s processes. Here is how businesses should utilize the power of internships for recruiting purposes.

Finding Cultural Fits

As most recruiters and hiring managers are aware of, finding candidates that are the right cultural fit for an organization can be difficult. While a candidate’s resume may have all of the right experience for a particular position — such as business analyst skills and a background in a particular industry — that doesn’t always translate into being the right fit for a particular organization and its culture. As such, hiring the right employee can be a difficult task that involves more guesswork than it does certainty.

A way to curb the uncertain nature of hiring employees is through the implementation of internships. Internships are a great way of testing whether a candidate fits well into an organization’s culture and has the right temperament to last for many years with a particular organization.

As such, internships are the perfect way to determine whether an employee will be the right fit for an organization’s culture and has the right personality traits to last for a long period of time.

Cultivating Employees with a Deep Understanding of One’s Organization

When it comes to employees within an organization, it can be difficult to find ones which have experience in multiple roles and departments. Internships can be an effective way to create well rounded employees that have a general understanding of various departments within an organization, making them more able to collaborate and lead others.

One beneficial aspect of internship programs is the fact that it allows organizations to move interns around to different departments and roles. This allows the intern to get a gauge of how various departments work while also allowing an organization to find the perfect role for that individual. This being the case, when it comes time for an organization to promote an intern to being a full-time employee, they’ll already have a good understanding of where this individual will thrive and be the greatest asset to the organization.

Creating More Loyalty to One’s Organization

When one recruits an employee to one’s organization, there’s a good chance that the employee will simply look at the opportunity as “just a job.” This, however, is typically far from the case when interns are recruited to become full-time employees within a company. This transition from intern to employee can help these new employees feel a sense of loyalty to a company — and this loyalty may potentially translate into higher rates of retention among employees.

By allowing individuals to start as interns at one’s company before recruiting them, one allows them to develop a sense of gratitude toward one’s organization. As such, employees who are onboarded after serving as interns will be more likely to stay at one’s organization longer as result of feeling a sense of loyalty and gratitude to one’s company.

Taking Advantage of Internships

Internships have the power to help organizations find employees who are a perfect match while being able to bypass the inefficiencies and guesswork associated with the traditional hiring process. By implementing an internship program, organizations have the power to choose employees from a pool of candidates who have displayed their strengths and ability to fit in with others within the organization.

This being the case, organizations looking for ways to consistently recruit high-quality employees can do so through the process of having an internship program.