Planning your internship

A good internship gives the intern an opportunity to make a significant contribution to your department, and their professional development.    

Choose a project that is important to the department and will give the intern a clear goal to work towards. Consult colleagues, line managers, and heads of department. If you can’t find one big project then the workload could be spread across a number of areas.  

Ideas could include, but are certainly not limited to:  

• Researching new development ideas or products.
• Improving information management systems, operational procedures, IT systems, internal communication systems etc.
• Creating marketing strategies, designing promotional materials, etc. 

For more inspiration have a look at previous Employ.ed on Campus internship case studies on our website. 

Skills:  

• What skills does the student need to complete the project?
• What skills do they need to fit in/contribute?
• Which skills are essential and which are desirable?
• What skills do you and/or the existing team have?
• This is helpful to work out what additional skills an intern will need to bring (essential), and also what skills they can develop.  

Thinking carefully about what is essential is important at this stage. Getting this right now, will help you write the job description.  For students the internship is an opportunity to use their existing skills and develop new ones. Skills might not be fully developed but when recruiting you can look for potential.  

Desired outcomes:

• What specific results do you want a student to achieve and by when?
• Do you envisage any obstacles to achieving these objectives?
• How will you measure the success of these results?
• How do these outcomes fit with wider business objectives? 

Equipment and workspace 

• What equipment does the intern need?
• Is there a desk available for the intern?
• Can you support an intern to work remotely and flexibly if required? 

Management time 

• Who is the designated line manager (and ideally buddy)?
• Have you thought about multiple managers for the intern depending on the project they are working on?
• How often does the line manager want reports/meetings?
• Does the rest of the team understand what the project is about?
• Do you have sufficient cover during the summer holiday period?
• Set aside time for the intern. With clear direction, support, encouragement, and sufficient challenge, your intern can make a huge contribution.
• Communicate about their workload from the beginning and try to be flexible to accommodate their progress. Make sure you have ‘backup work’, some interns are extraordinarily efficient (often as they don’t have many meetings, emails, or other admin to work through each day).

Training

• What training will the intern need?
• What training can you offer in house?
• Will other team members have time to help upskill your intern?
• Consider external or online training.

A good internship will: 

• be both a learning and development opportunity for them, as well as delivery of a piece of work for you.
• have clear milestones.
• give the intern variety and responsibility.
• deliver a genuine 'something extra' with a medium to long term benefit.
• include working with a range of people, including clients or senior colleagues. This could mean shadowing at a more strategic level, where appropriate.
• offer the chance to use written/verbal communication skills in a professional context.
• clearly fit into the wider context of your department's role/aims/stakeholders.
• allow the intern to demonstrate how they have added value e.g. presenting at team meetings

Our guidance has been based on information from:  

• CIPD ‘Internships that work: a guide for employers'
• Gateways to the Professions Collaborative Forum’s ‘Common Best Practice Code for High Quality Internships’