How To Hire The Perfect Intern

Interns can be highly valuable resources to your company. They may help you complete everyday tasks, assist your workers, add to the diversity of your office, give you an insider look into a younger generation, and eventually end up working for you as a paid employee.

According to research from LinkedIn, 61 percent of students who have internships secure job offers by the end of their senior year in college. If you want to be among the many employees who have had luck with finding great interns, you need to know how to spot the best candidate for the job.

The following are some pointers from internship advisors across different industries on how you can tell who’s going to be the perfect intern for you.

How To Hire An Intern For A Small Business

They know your company 

When prospective interns come into your office for their interviews, they should be equipped with knowledge about your company.

“I ask them why they want to work for the company,” says Lavera Wright, who runs an accounting services and financial consulting firm out of WeWork Commons. “Based on some of their responses, they’ll show me if they took a look at the website and researched the company they want to work for. Did they look at the mission statement? Do they know who is on the board of directors?”

If a prospective intern doesn’t bother to research what you’re all about, then he or she is not really interested in the position. You want an intern who’s going to be passionate about the job and possibly working for your company down the line.

They’re personable

When hiring an intern, you don’t want a robot who’s just going to be good at making copies and Excel spreadsheets. Instead, you should be on the lookout for someone who is going to make a positive contribution to your workplace.

Briana Darensburg, talent and culture coordinator of Omaze, says that she always looks for interns who are “really well-spoken and can articulate their ideas.”

“We’re a creative company and we do a lot of brainstorming,” she says. “We value their ideas.”

She also factors personality into her hiring decision, because it can affect the whole company.

“The perfect intern comes in with a great attitude every day,” she says. “It brightens up our office.”

They have goals

If this seems like it’ll just be another job for your interviewee or a selling point on his or her resume, don’t make the hire. You want interns who have goals and dreams. They should know where they want to go, and how you can help them get there.

“During an interview, I’ll ask them where they see themselves in the next three months, six months, or maybe a year,” says Wright. “I’m looking for those who don’t want a job. They want to build a career.”

They have some experience

The best interns are going to have a background related to what your company does. They may be working towards a degree in your field, perform similar extracurricular activities at their school, or have on-the-job experience.

“We require that interns have at least one previous internship,” says Darensburg. “That really catches my eye.”

If you hire interns who already worked at companies in your industry, it’s going to be easier to train them. Also, they’ll know pretty much what you expect, and how to conduct themselves in the workplace.

They survive your training

Unlike Wright and Darensburg, Jeff Pan, who designs hostels and works out of WeWork Soho, can’t figure out whether or not an intern will be great based on one meeting.

Instead, he conducts training to see what they’re made of.

“We had seven interns from New York University, and we put them through the two-day boot camp,” he says. “They started from the very bottom, organizing their emails and putting on filters, and seeing how to use Trello.”

If you’re like Pan, and you’re hiring interns who have absolutely no previous internship or work experience, come up with some duties they can take on either before they start or in their first few days on the job. The ones who are still interested will stick around, and might even become assets to your company. Out of the seven interns he put through his boot camp, Pan ended up offering a job to one of them at the end of the internship.

Even if you think you’ve made the perfect hire, you still need to set expectations and goals, and check in with your interns. After all, they’re new to the industry and probably the workforce in general, and they’re looking to you for guidance. If you’re there for them, and help them flourish, it will benefit your company in more ways than you can imagine.