How Vouch launched an Internship Program

Judy Situ | Senior Recruiting Coordinator

As a recruiting coordinator, you typically work behind the scenes throughout the hiring process. I wasn’t expecting it to be any different when I started with Vouch in January 2021, but I’m glad that I was wrong. About two or three months after I started with the company, I was given an opportunity to build and manage our summer internship program. Taking this on was daunting since there wasn’t an existing process in place, but I was excited by the challenge.

With an approved headcount and the support of my team, off I went. Unfortunately, I had no idea where to start. Imposter syndrome was a frequent and unwelcome visitor, but one of my teammates gave me some great words of comfort. They said, “Anything you come up with this year will only be an improvement from last year.” It was hilariously simple, but it gave me the confidence to trust in myself to continue moving forward. So with that mantra in mind, I journeyed on a little less nervous and a little more self-assured. That comment stuck with me throughout that first year, and still does.

The first year is a bit of a blur. I spent a lot of my time researching and gathering ideas on how to manage a successful internship program. Some clear snapshot memories I have are reviewing resumes, begging schools on Handshake to approve our company, and reaching out to various school programs and clubs to diversify the range of sources for applicants. In the end, what came out of it was a clumsily sketched blueprint for a 10-week summer internship program and a backbone for the hiring process behind that.

A very common term you hear associated with start-ups is “scrappy”. There truly is no other word more fitting than “scrappy” to describe that first year of creating the Vouch Internship Program. Despite the challenges, we got the program launched and ended up with six fantastic interns that summer. One of them was given a part-time position until the end of the year, and three others moved into full-time roles with the company.

Looking back, it was far from perfect, but I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished that year.If I could give one piece of advice on creating an internship program or something similar from scratch, it would be documentation. One of the most helpful things we did during that first year was to document every step of the process. We recorded ideas from brainstorming and research sessions, created various templates and scripts, and jotted down timelines and feedback. This documentation was important because it became our roadmap for the following years. We used it to identify pain points and plan ways to improve the hiring experience for both candidates and hiring managers.

Since launching the program we’ve continued to look for ways to refine and enhance it each year. We’ve learned from our mistakes, implemented new ideas, and made improvements along the way.

In 2021, we were primarily focused on throwing together an intern hiring process as well as roughly sketching out what the 10-week internship program would entail. It wasn’t much, but it gave us something to work off of for the next year. In 2022, we worked on creating more structure for the hiring managers during the hiring process. This included things like stricter timeliness, and direction on creating interview panels and making decisions. This year we’re collaborating more closely with our HR partners and Office Ops with the intention of providing a meaningful and intentional 10-week summer internship program experience for our interns.

A few highlights we offer in the internship program:

• A comprehensive and structured onboarding plan to make sure our interns feel supported from day 1
• Direct mentorship and valuable development opportunities
• Celebrating Intern Appreciation Day
• Wrapping up with Intern Presentations on projects that they worked on over the summer

The most rewarding perk that came out of this experience was, and still is, the opportunity to build something from scratch and watch it evolve over time. That’s certainly been the case with our internship program at Vouch. It started out as a blueprint of ideas, but with scrappy persistence and a commitment to providing the best hiring and internship experience, the summer internship program now has a structure with many support systems that help it run. Looking back and seeing how the hiring process went this year, as well as the steps we’re currently taking to focus on the growth of the intern, I am immensely proud of what we have built. At the same time, I fully expect that the process we worked with this year will look different next year, but that’s all the more exciting because it can only improve.