How to Hire an Intern in 5 Easy Steps

Hiring an intern is a great way to tap into talented individuals who haven’t yet or have just graduated from college. While you have the option for paid or unpaid internships, it’s not free labor and, in fact, it requires you to become a teacher, mentor, and guide. You can find interns by contacting your college career center or searching on job boards like ZipRecruiter.

1. Determine Your Needs

An internship is generally project-based. It’s not unlike hiring a contract worker where you decide upfront what you want them to do and how learning or developing that expertise will help them build career skills. Interns typically work on projects that require certain skills and can be time-boxed in such a way that a student can complete their assignment over the summer or by working a few hours a week during the school semester.

Project vs Position

Whereas a traditional job position may focus on a myriad job duties, an internship is typically focused on a much smaller skills-based project. It’s not uncommon for interns to do research-related tasks that are project-based, resulting in a deliverable—such as a report.

Below are examples of projects that interns can provide based on their academic major:

• Statistical Research: Students studying international business, economics, or biomedical topics can often assist with data analytics and trend analysis.
• Engineering: Students studying engineering or architecture may be able to help you set up and launch your 3D printer or re-design your warehouse or retail store layout.
• Graphic Design: Art and design students often need to build out their portfolio while in school. They can upgrade your existing website and marketing collateral with images. Marketing students learning to work with website development tools may be able to help you jump-start or optimize your retail ecommerce site.
• Streamline Business Processes: A business student could be tasked with documenting your processes in order to expose potential time savers or software tools. An HR or instructional design student could be tasked with creating a new hire onboarding program for new hire orientation and training.

Flexible Schedule vs Full-Time Work

Interns are typically part-time workers with flexible schedules. Some schools offer co-op programs that alternate school and work to allow students to obtain real-life experience while they’re still in school. In general, you’ll need to consider the work hours you’re looking for and the amount of supervision and training you’re able to provide during those internship hours.

These are some common examples of internship schedules:

• Part-Time School-Year Internship: Interns are often available for work schedules ranging from five to 20 hours a week during the school year.
• Part-Time Summer Internship: Some interns prefer to take on assignments during the summer, such as 20 hours a week during the months of June and July.
• Full-Time Semester Internship: There may be times when your intern wants to take a break from their study schedule and embed themselves full time in their chosen field.

In general, unpaid internships need to align closely to the academic calendar, whereas paid internships provide you more scheduling flexibility. There are also other options, like bringing a foreign graduate student over for a yearlong internship. In those cases, you’ll be responsible not only to provide a living wage to the intern but also to manage housing, transportation, and other costs such as healthcare.

Paid vs Unpaid

There are two types of internships, paid and unpaid. Unpaid internships are for nonprofits and firms that comply with FLSA internship guidelines. Paid internships require you to comply with federal law to pay at or above minimum wage for your state (current federal rate is $7.25 an hour).

FLSA Internship Guidelines

When you bring an intern onto your team, you need to abide by federal labor laws and state workforce requirements. This includes avoiding discrimination, preventing sexual harassment, complying with tax laws (if the intern is paid), complying with the FLSA, and providing health insurance benefits depending on how large your organization is and how many hours a week the intern works.

For an internship to be unpaid and meet the strict requirements of the FLSA, it must comply with the following guidelines:

• Make clear to the intern that the internship and any work they do is unpaid.
• Don’t promise the intern a job or imply that the internship may lead to a paid job.
• Provide hands-on training and experiences to enhance what the student learns in school.
• Ensure that course credit is provided or that the work closely aligns with the intern’s major.
• Allow the student flexibility to attend courses; accommodate their academic schedule.
• Tie the internship start and end dates to the academic quarter, semester, or break.
• Ensure the internship benefits the intern significantly from an academic point of view.
• Don’t hire interns to do the work of, or to replace, paid employees.

2. Find Interns

Once you’ve decided on the type of job you need to hire for, you should begin looking for an intern. A great place to start is with academic institutions that are in the business of training students on those skill sets. If you’re looking for a Biomed research intern, for example, you’d likely search universities with medical programs.

Explore Local Schools

• Universities: Many universities have structured internship programs that provide students with college credit for their internship experience. Others manage paid internship programs for students, and a few offer funds to support their learners participating in unpaid internships.
• Colleges: Your local community college may have an internship program too. But even if they don’t, it’s a great place to find a student intern. You can contact the career center or visit the school and chat with a faculty member who teaches the kind of courses you’d like your intern to have taken such as Accounting 101 or Electrical Engineering. Further, most local colleges have a place you can post your internship opportunity—even if it’s just a note card pinned to an old-fashioned bulletin board in a cafeteria, computer lab, or student center.
• Trade Schools: Local trade schools in your area may have similar programs to help match you with an intern in fields ranging from animal husbandry to welding. These schools may also have a place to post your internship opportunity.

Advertise on Job Boards

In addition to contacting relevant academic institutions, you can also find students and recent college graduates searching for internships on job boards. In fact, there are niche job boards that target student job placements, and many universities have their own job boards managed through the career center. If you have a solid social network following, you can also let students know by posting information about your internship on your website, Facebook, or Instagram accounts.

• Employment Job Sites: Free job boards and paid job posting sites allow you to post your internship opportunities and track interns who apply by using their applicant tracking tools. This helps you avoid discrimination issues by being able to monitor your intern outreach.
• Internship Job Board: Internships.com is an example of a job board that specifically targets employers looking for interns and students looking for career experiences. Both paid and unpaid internship seekers can be found on this website; however, you have to sign up to post jobs and view student resumes. Other intern job boards include InternJobs.com, CollegeRecruiter.com, and LinkedIn.com.

Need more help with hiring employees? Check out our in-depth guide on how to hire.

3. Review Resumes & Interview

Even though the intern will not be a permanent part of your company, you should still require and carefully review their resume. Be sure that the intern has the skills necessary to perform the job at hand. While they may not have a lot of work experience, they can provide educational experiences on their resumes to showcase their skills.

Additionally, it is necessary to interview them before hiring. You can conduct interviews with interns in the same traditional manner that you would interview a potential employee: by phone, video, or in person. In these interviews, you should focus on the intern’s career path and skills needed to succeed in the future. Your available position may help them learn and master the skills needed to pursue a career in that field.

It’s not uncommon for interns to be recommended by a faculty adviser or for there to be only one or two interns available for the exact skills you seek. In that case, you may opt not to go through a full interview process and instead skip ahead to set up your internship based on what the educational institution requires such as an internship agreement.

4. Hire Your Intern

Now is the time to hire the intern you have chosen to fill the position. It is important to have an internship agreement—a kind of employment contract tailored to the specific intern’s work project and duration—in place, just as you would with a full-time employee.

Typically, an internship begins with an agreement between a student and employee; this agreement may be facilitated through a university and or aligned with the student’s academic program. At a minimum, it should list the project or outcomes desired such as a project deliverables (report, testing guide, training course, or data spreadsheet). It should also clearly list whether the internship is unpaid or paid and how much the stipend or pay rate will be.

Additionally, different from a standard work agreement, it’s best to document the expected start and end dates of the internship (aligned to the academic calendar), along with a statement that there’s no promise or guarantee of employment once the internship is over. Obtaining signatures from all parties can help ensure everyone is in agreement on the terms.

Download Sample Internship Agreement

5. Pay Your Intern

If it’s your first time hiring an intern, you may not be sure how best to pay them. If you already have paid employees, you can simply add the intern as a temporary employee to your payroll system. We recommend easy-to-use software like Gusto, as it tracks workers’ earnings, manages payroll taxes, and provides W-2 tax forms.

Another option, if you’re paying a lump sum stipend, is to process the payment in your accounting software. For example, with QuickBooks, you can provide the stipend payment similar to an independent contractor and send the intern a 1099-Misc at year-end.

Academic Credit

In some cases, students can earn college credit for the work they do with your firm, in lieu of pay. The school will require you to give the intern valuable work experiences that further their educational experience. And, some even require you to complete a final report or evaluation on the student’s work.

Pros and Cons of Hiring an Intern

The benefit of hiring an intern is that it can help you get project work done. In addition, it may help you identify talent that you can bring into your company once the student graduates from college. However, the best of all reasons is that it improves your employment brand as you “give back” to your community by training future workers and leaders.

Bottom Line

The best way to hire an intern is to determine in advance how much time you’re willing to spend providing rich learning experiences and what kind of skills a student might bring to your organization in the short time they’re available. After that, it’s all about finding the best fit and documenting an internship agreement.