How to Write an Internship Job Opening for Your Startup
A well-written job post helps to maximize applications and increase your chances of securing great talent
As a startup founder, especially a first-time founder, hiring interns to help you build your product or market it can be a good strategy. There are many ways to find interns but finding them online needs to be paid a lot of attention to. Trying to find someone who‘d not only fit the profile but could also one day become a part of your company can be a big challenge.
To attract the right kind of talent, you need to write a great job post that not only tells the candidate about the internship’s duties & responsibilities but also gives them information about your company and also the benefits they may get through this opportunity. Hence, to write a great job posting, there are a few standards you’ll want to keep in mind as you begin to plan how you’ll write the open position in your company.
I’m going to share my approach towards writing job openings using examples from a job post I wrote a few months ago. It not only worked well and got me applications from some amazingly talented people from all around the world, but also taught me how important writing a job description well really is. It really set the template for my future job posts that always get me at least 40–50 applications for every post.
So here‘s everything you need to write carefully in your job post so that you get applications from some great candidates.
About your company — Before you tell the candidates what this internship is about, you should tell them what your company does and at what stage your company is. You don’t have to write a lot here, just 2–3 lines are more than enough. For example:
<Company’s name> is a <mobile app/ product type> that helps users solve <problem> by providing <solution>. We are a ready to launch early-stage startup and we’re looking for an intern to help us with <marketing/ operations>.
Job title — Keep it simple. Don’t try to make it too fancy. Writing ‘Marketing intern’ is much better than writing ‘Content ninja’ or ‘Content king’.
Job type — Make it clear what type of role is your job post for. Is this for a Full-time, Part-time role? Or an internship or a freelance project.
Start period — When can the candidate expect to start working? Does the internship start immediately? Or on a particular date?
Duration — How long is this internship going to be? The standard duration is 3–6 months. But it can be longer or shorter depending on various factors. You can contemplate the requirements and then write the duration. Discussing this during the interviews with the candidate is also a good idea.
Location — Where will the intern be working? Is it in your office or is a remote role? Since the outbreak of Covid-19, there has been a surge in remote internships and they have become more acceptable than ever before. So you can also make it clear if the internship is open to foreign applicants or not.
The number of vacancies — How many interns do you plan to hire. Do you just want 1 intern? Or would it take a team of 3–5 interns to achieve your goals? Ask yourself this question and then decide.
Job function — Is it a Marketing role? Or a Finance/ HR/ Operations role? Making it clear in the job post avoids any misunderstanding or ambiguity.
Job role — What is this role in particular about? For example, if it’s a Marketing Internship, what specific kind of marketing role is the intern going to be taking? Is it Brand Marketing or Content Marketing? Or is Growth Hacking or Marketing Analytics? Making this clear will make it easier for the candidates to decide if they want to apply or not.
Job benefits — Are you offering any benefits to your interns? Benefits don’t really have to be just monetary. There are other kinds of benefits too that this role may offer, for example, you may give them the flexible work hours if it’s a remote role. Or free food/ conveyance and invitation to events if it’s an in-office role. If you have none, you may skip it. But try to add a few things here as it makes your job opening look much more attractive.
Job Requirements
This is a separate section where you should mention what skills do you expect the candidates to have. These are the fields you should add in this section:
Work experience — Are you looking for candidates with work experience? If yes, how much? Be it 1–3 years or 3–5 years, be clear. If work experience is not a criterion, then mention that you are open to people with zero work experience. But do not leave it blank or skip it.
Must have skills — What are the skills that an intern MUST possess to get this position? These are skills that are absolutely necessary to achieve the goals of this role. For example, if it’s a Marketing Internship, the must-have skills could be Digital Marketing, Content Marketing or Marketing Strategy (depending on your requirement). Again, think deeply about the role and you would be able to mention these. If you can’t decide or don’t know what these skills could be, do a little research online and you’ll be able to figure it out. But do not miss this. Adding this field will make it clear that you know what kind of people you’re looking for and you’ll get applications from highly skilled candidates.
Nice to have skills — These are not the must-have skills, but skills that will be of advantage to a candidate’s application. For example, it could be SEO, Content writing experience or even marketing analytics. This might not look significant but trust me this can add a lot of value to your job post and attract highly skilled candidates.
Remuneration (salary)
This is a separate section and depending on whether it is a paid or an unpaid internship here’s what you need to mention in this section:
Unpaid — If it’s an unpaid internship make it clear and concise. You may also add what would you be giving instead of remuneration to the interns at the end of the internship. It’s a good idea to give them a certificate and a letter of recommendation at the end of the internship as they both add a lot of value to the candidates in their future job opportunities.
Paid — If it’s a paid internship, you should first mentioned the remuneration (with the specific currency) and the time basis. For example, $500 per month (USD) or €2000 per month. It is better to mention the base (fixed) salary and bonus salary (if any) and the factors/ KPIs the bonus depends on.
After these points, comes the most important part, the job description.
Job description
This too is a separate section with 3 sub-sections in which you should give a quick introduction to the company
About the internship — Here, you should give a synopsis/ idea of what duties will the intern be undertaking if selected. Again, you don’t need to write a lot here and 2–3 lines would be sufficient here. It is also a good idea to mention which team or who the intern will be working with. For example:
In this critical role, you will strive to achieve both immediate and long-term goals. You will <do task X, Y and Z>. You will also < do more important tasks 1 & 2>. You will work closely with <team or designation of a person> to achieve < goals set by the company for the intern>.
Job description/ duties — Now you need to mention what tasks the intern is expected to undertake, point by point. Make sure you mention each and every task you can think of. To do this the right way, you’d have to think a lot and make sure you’re not forgetting anything. Also, remember that even though there may be lots of tasks, you should write to them all but try to keep their description limited to 1–2 lines.
For example here are the first 5 of the many tasks that I had mentioned in my startup WriteSome’s content writer internship job opening:
The content writer will:
- Work closely with our founder to identify the latest trending topics, the direction of articles; storytelling, brand tone and framework.
- Plan out and execute our content strategy
- Write new articles
- Edit and proofread articles written by other team members before publishing
- Create and edit digital content for target audiences across all multimedia and social platforms
You can refer to these and try writing similar concise sentences to keep them to the point.
Requirements — Even though you may have mentioned the requirements earlier, this is a good place to write them down in detail. What you write in the earlier section is to let the candidates know what the requirements are, in a nutshell. What you write now, is to write in detail about what exactly are you looking for in an ideal candidate.
For example, here are a few of the requirements we mentioned in the earlier mentioned job opening:
Job requirements:
- This internship position is open to everyone. Preference will be given to college students still pursuing their degrees or who have graduated from college in the last 1–2 years
- Good command over the English language is a must
- Love for writing stories or poetry is a must.
- Experience in blogging is a plus. Even better if you can send us some links to your work in your resumé (this is not mandatory though)
Good to have — In this last section of the job opening, you may (or may not) write requirements that may be of an advantage to you. These are not absolutely necessary but may help you achieve more with the same candidate. For example:
Nice to have:
- Working knowledge of ‘Canva’ a big plus
- Have graduated in the last two years or are still in college.
Having all these sections in your job opening and making them short and concise will help you get great candidates and a great intern.
I hope this helps you write your job opening post and make things clear and easy for you. Do let me know how it goes for you in the comments section or on Twitter.
