How to find the most qualified interns who will deliver results


Think like an intern.

For some of you this may be difficult because maybe you’ve never interned or maybe you interned a long time ago — a time when unpaid internships directly led to jobs.

Things have changed and so have prospective interns’ motivations.

We have found that the companies, which land the highest caliber candidates and see the biggest ROI from their interns, are the ones that:

  • Offer flexibility in work environment, i.e. allow interns to work remotely or virtually
  • Pay — even the smallest stipend of $200 per month can do the trick
  • Give the student definitive goals and metrics to meet and be judged on in weekly reviews
  • Hold weekly deliverable meetings for both parties’ benefits

Write a killer project description.

Pretend your job posting is like an email you have to read. What’s the perfect email (besides no email) look like to you?

It’s probably short, easily scannable and has a clear call-to-action so you quickly know what you need to do next.

Here’s an example:


Catchy headline in bold
Company: Example.com (Don’t describe your company. Just link to it. Applicants should do the research themselves, and they will.)
Incentives:
- Bullet 1
- Bullet 2
- Bullet 3
Responsibilities:
- Bullet 1
- Bullet 2
- Bullet 3
Skills:
- Bullet 1
- Bullet 2
- Bullet 3
How to Apply: Insert what you want them to do to apply clearly and concisely. If you have more than one thing you want then use bullet points.

Know the right people and the right places.

Knowing the right people to ask and the right places to look will save you a multitude of time when intern hunting.

We’ve tested loads of different online platforms to find candidates (which we’ll really dive into in our upcoming, in-depth review of the top places to source contractors and interns). For the time being, here’s the short version:

  • Internships.com is a great place to find bad interns, who are willing to work for nothing.
  • Craigslist is not a bad place to advertise, so we hear.
  • Elance spams you with an overload of mediocre to terrible but super cheap contractors overseas.

Want to learn how to tell a stud intern from a dud intern, and other awesome intern hiring insights, read the rest of our blog post here.