The Single Most Sure-Fire Hiring Decision You Will Ever Make
How To Start An Internship Program
“One good way to snag the great people who are never in the job market is to get them before they even realize there is a job market: when they’re in college.” All the way back in 2006, Joel Spolsky knew that a competitive and rewarding internship program was the best way to acquire top engineering talent. Yet even in 2014, in the midst of a talent crunch, surprisingly few technical companies have internship programs.
Here are some answers to questions you might have if you don’t have an established internship program at your company.
When Should You Begin Intern Recruiting?
If you are trying to compete with the Googles of the world, then the answer is early. Large tech companies have hundreds of internship spots available and swoop in at the start of the school year to start filling them. If you only have eight or so internship spots open at your company, and you want the best applicants, then you need to begin early.
At Fog Creek our recruiting efforts begin just a few short weeks after our summer program ends in August and last until February. By March we hope to have our class finalized so we can begin making housing arrangements and planning our outings and parties. We are always accepting internship resumes but areactively recruiting for our summer internship program September through February. March through May, we spend planning for our interns’ arrival. June through August, the program takes place. We break for a week or two, then BAM, we start recruiting again in September.
Our final eight 2014 interns applied no later than December; two in September, two in October, one in November, and three in December.
Which Career Fairs Should You Attend?
I only take Fog Creek to tailored events: STEM fairs, start-up events, or programs put on by CS departments, specifically. This year we attended three New York Tech Talent Drafts at Princeton, Brown and Columbia. We also attended the Yale Innovation Fair, the Stony Brook CS Fair, Princeton’s STEM Fair and we were Platinum Sponsors for OUTC.
Three of our 2014 interns came from schools we specifically targeted while the other five were already familiar with our brand and products. Remember, you’re not just recruiting for this season but for all future seasons. You may have a fantastic conversation with a freshman, and perhaps they get halfway through your process but aren’t quite there yet and just need another year or two at school. Keep in touch with them! Let them know when you’re attending another event at their school. Three of our 2014 interns were applicants who applied previously.
Where Should You Post Your Internship?
This season we posted our internship job listing on our own careers page, HireBrite and UCAN.
If you don’t know where to begin here’s a good rule: only target colleges that admit less than 30% of applicants. That will give you a head start on being selective, especially if you have limited spots available in your program.
How Much Does Intern Recruiting Cost?
Registration fees, travel of a recruiter and two developers to each event, brochures, swag, job postings and in-person interview expenses totaled $33,323.41 for our 2014 recruiting season. If we get a single awesome developer out of the internship program, the cost is well worth it.
If you want to keep costs down attend local recruiting events only, produce one swag item instead of five, or bring one developer with you instead of two.
I should mention that it also costs time. Our developers are highly involved with our recruiting process, as you’ll see in a moment, and we recognize there is a cost associated with that as well. You’ll need to make sure your organization is on board for this type of hidden cost to the company.
What’s A Competitive Program?
We happily spoil our interns. If you’re a rising senior you’ll get: $6,000/month, a $1,000 signing bonus, free housing in New York City, Unlimited MetroCards, free gym membership, two New York City events planned per week, catered lunches, and the chance to work with the amazing people at Fog Creek.
New York City events mean: Broadway shows, baseball games, a pizza tour of the West Village, a fishing trip with our Co-Founder, a sushi and Karaoke night out, trapeze classes, archery classes, MoMa scavenger hunts, rock climbing, movie outings, a comedy show, Coney Island, and more.
You should provide a comfortable work environment and treat them as you would any new hire. For us that means height-adjustable desks, Aeron chairs, 30” monitors and the computer environment of their choice.
Create a fun summer lineup while providing them with quality work and a nice salary and you’ll be competitive.
How Many Interns Should You Hire?
You want to consider a few factors to find the right internship class size that fits your company. How many developers do you have? How many can dedicate their time to being meaningful mentors? What projects do you have in mind? How much office space do you have?
We found that our optimal class size is between six and ten interns. This allows us to have a 1:1 intern to mentor ratio. Our interns work on real features with the goal to ship frequently. Last year three of our interns worked on Kiln and seven worked on Trello.
We currently have 9 desks in our “intern area” with room to expand into our library if needed. Our eight interns this season will fit comfortably in their allotted space.
What Kind of Recruiting Process Should You Use?
Here’s what we do at Fog Creek:
Initial Resume Review: Anyone can do this, it’s making sure the intern candidate has shown basic communication skills, is currently enrolled in a four year academic institution, has answered our automatic reply which includes a few questions, and has legal right to work in the United States. We received 776 resumes for our 2014 internship program. We were able to filter out 152 applications right off the bat during this very first step.
Resume Review: At Fog Creek, we think it’s important to have the resumes reviewed by the people that will be working with the interns, the developers. But be mindful of your developers time. I assign 10-15 resumes for review in bulk. This allows each developer to choose when they want to switch gears from coding to recruiting vs. being interrupted with fewer resumes but more frequently.
Code Screen 1: Conducted by a developer, this step usually takes an hour and takes place either by phone, Google Hangouts, or Skype if the student is currently studying abroad. Our intern candidates can pick whichever coding language they want. We are not looking for any particular buzzwords, but we are looking for knowledge in the language they do end up choosing. Our developers conducted a total 137 Code Screen 1 interviews for our 2014 recruiting season.
Code Screen 2: This step is the same as Code Screen 1, with the exception that it is conducted by a different developer who asks a different coding question. We did an additional 53 Code Screen 2 phone interviews for our 2014 recruiting season.
In Person Interview: Starting at 10:00am and typically lasting until 2:00pm, our intern candidates meet with an additional four developers and join us for lunch. We held 29 in-person interviews for our 2014 recruiting season. And yes, we prepare all our in-person travel itineraries for the candidate and cover all costs. We also present them with a nice gift bag when they arrive to our office.
Offer: A candidate needs to receive all hires in order to receive an offer from Fog Creek. Two phone screens and four in-person interviews means all six developers need to agree. We made only nine offers during our 2014 recruiting season, eight accepted. One more thing, don’t give an “exploding offer”. Let your candidate think about this important decision without ridiculous fake deadlines. Treat them like human beings trying to make a choice, not just a number.
So, that’s 776 applications to 9 offers made within five months. It’s an intense five months. We make an effort to move the process along as quickly as possible. However, in the end, it depends on the school schedule of the individual candidate and our developers schedule. I’d say on average it takes a candidate five weeks to get from application submission to receiving an offer.
Again, be mindful of your developer’s time. I only schedule three recruiting events per developer per week, that’s three hours a week. Anything more and their heads starts to hurt. Anything less and your pipeline isn’t moving quickly enough.
Sounds Like A Lot Of Work. Is It Worth It?
Yes.
Imagine after just three months you had eager, extremely talented, computer-science students returning to school to talk nothing but good things about their experience at your company to their peers. And, by the following May, you would have new hires joining your team who were already familiar with your company’s values, products, and work ethics. How could they not? They passed a three month interview! Hiring an intern as a full-time employee will be the single most sure-fire hiring decision you will ever make.
What if you make no offers at the end of your internship season? Well, if you gave them quality work and trusted them enough to work on your real products then you should have awesome new features rolled out to customers or perhaps even the beginnings of a whole new product.
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* Graphics courtesy of Lucas Pattan
Originally Posted on April 7, 2014 http://behindthescenesrecruiter.com/
