|
|
|
Student Counsel
Internships can be a win-win for mentors and mentees.
But many companies don't take advantage of the opportunity
|
Business New Haven
6/10/2002
By:
Karen Singer
|
Although colleges and universities are constantly on the lookout for companies to use college interns, many small businesses apparently aren't tapping into this potential labor pool.
“We know of a lot of small businesses out there that could use the help, but may not know how to take to take advantage of these opportunities,” says Dennis Gruell, state director of the Connecticut Small Business Development Center (CSBDC).
Interns “really are being underutilized” in the New Haven area, adds CSBDC regional director Peter Rivera. “There's plenty of need here for assistance with regard to technical issues and finance.”
Increasing numbers of student interns are eager to work at smaller local companies, a trend Gruell attributes to the tightening labor market.
“When the economy was booming, the bigger companies were snapping up interns, but with the slowdown, more have become available,” Gruell says.
That's good news for employers looking to plug staffing holes.
“It has become a much more level playing field,” says Mark Case, director of career development at the Yale School of Management, who also has seen a “notable increase” in regional company recruitment of graduates.
Case arranges internships, which are mandatory for Yale MBA students, and says more now are accepting positions with smaller firms in the region. These include Wexler & Farnam, a non-profit New Haven consulting firm, Split the Difference, an online information services firm also in New Haven, and city agencies such as the Housing Authority of New Haven.
Yale students also are working on business plans for start-up organizations looking for local funding through the Yale Entrepreneurship Summer Internship Program, which Case calls “a great training ground for our MBAs.”
Internships are “a great way to try out a potential employee,” adds UNH associate professor Gil Fried, who coordinates internship programs for UNH's business school. One recent graduate, for example, joined the Jewish Community Center in Bridgeport full-time after completing his internship.
He's not alone. Job Outlook 2002, an annual survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges & Employers (NACE), shows employers hiring new college graduates rank internships as the most effective way to recruit them.
Keenly aware of the trend, colleges and universities in the New Haven region are stressing the importance of “real world experience” gained as an intern. Students seeking internships can find leads online at such sites as internweb.com and internshipprograms.com, but most often find opportunities through their schools.
“We're placing an increasing emphasis on internships,” says Kathryn Link, assistant director of career development at the University of New Haven.
Marilyn Miller, a UNH professor and coordinator of the school's undergraduate program in forensic science, urges students to tackle internships, which are optional, rather than research projects.
“Many of the forensic lab directors who hire our graduates feel that student internships are, in many cases, more important than actual coursework,” Miller says.
Fried has placed UNH sports marketing students, who must complete an internship, with small local companies such as WIRZ and Associates Sports Consultants in Milford, minor league teams including the New Haven Ravens and Bridgeport Bluefish, and non-profits such as Long Wharf Theatre. He says about 20 percent of the companies he deals with are small, but many more “aren't maximizing the advantages” of internships because “they just don't have the frame of reference” to find them (see accompanying article).
“One doesn't have to be a corporation the size of SNET or Yale to get interns,” says Suzanne Yurko Wall, director of career services at Albertus Magnus College. “All they need is a valid position that will be a learning experience for the student and be beneficial to them. There is a contract that the student and business signs, setting forth expectations on both sides.”
The decision whether to pay an intern “lies completely with an employer,” Yurko Wall says, adding all students receive academic credit.
This past spring, Albertus' career-services office lined up 46 internships. Undergraduate students in a variety of programs took most of them, but 12 were arranged by continuing-education students in their 30s and 40s majoring in psychology and sociology.
“Interns have been the lifeblood of this place,” says Helen Higgins, executive director of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. Higgins handles two types of interns: out-of-state students majoring in graduate and undergraduate programs in historic preservation, and students from area schools, including Albertus, pursuing other majors who want nuts-and-bolts business experience.
“Because we run an office, we have needs such as answering phones or filing,” she says. “We also use [interns] quite a bit with our newsletter, writing short articles or proofreading. Some of them know grammar probably better than most of us who have been out in the world, and they know the computer really well.”
Higgins says she never has had to look for interns, but urges other small companies to do so if they haven't been asked.
“Go for it,” she says. “They can be very inexpensive or free help, but remember you have a training obligation and an oversight obligation.”
Manson Youth Institution, a state correctional facility in Cheshire housing convicted sexual offenders and murderers, also has worked with Albertus interns. “I try to get them so they can conduct groups, be part of a group discussions and do intakes,” says clinical supervisor Donald Charron.
Over the past year, the St. Francis Home for Children, a non-profit residential treatment facility in New Haven for children with psychological and behavioral problems, has hosted 15 interns from area schools including Albertus and Southern Connecticut State University.
“We wanted to work with the community and enrich our program,” says Ward Halverson, a clinician who initially contacted the schools regarding availability of interns. “It took a while to make the right connections, but then they began calling me.” Halverson already has interns lined up for next semester, and two of the Albertus interns were recently hired as employees.
At Gateway Community College, hospitality management professor Stephen Fries lines up credit-based internships with companies of all sizes.
This spring Fries placed 18 undergraduates studying culinary arts, hotel management and food-services management with companies such as the Omni New Haven Hotel, whose sales manager and guest services manager are Gateway graduates, and Judie's European Baked Goods in Branford.
Several other business majors spent five hours a week interning at New Haven Savings Bank, New-Haven-based ad agency McLaughlin DelVecchio & Casey, and Healthworks in Wallingford, among other companies.
Sometimes Fries contacts small employers, who may not be aware of the possibility of using interns.
“I didn't even know Gateway offered culinary courses,” says Lisa Blanchard, a personal chef and owner of the Missing Ingredient. Serving people with special dietary needs, Blanchard buys supplies and spends one day every two weeks cooking and packaging meals at a client's residence.
Fries called Blanchard to set up an internship for the spring semester with a student who had located her business on the Internet.
“I was not going to teach her how to cook, but how to menu-plan and manage your time,” she says. “It sounded so great I could help somebody, and it turned out to be such a wonderful experience I would do it again.”
Judie's Baked Goods owner David Brooks also hadn't considered interns until he heard from Fries, but thought it was a “fine idea” that mirrored his own work-study experience at the Culinary Institute of America. Brooks has since worked with two interns, who were “really well-screened and very responsible,” and is now teaching classes at Gateway.
Other Gateway students interning at Yale University's Commons Dining Hall, a huge operation with a bake shop and catering service, must pass muster as manager for a day, among other challenges.
“What I've found is that students very quickly get a great idea of where they want to be in the business,” notes general manager Bob Alberino.
But internships are only as good as the structure employers create for them. “Sometimes you end up filing things, and sometimes, especially with a smaller company, you get lucky and get a site where they let you get your hands into everything,” says Arlene Ajami, accounting personnel manager at the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, which uses interns from several area schools.
As a Gateway student, Ajami interned with a sole-proprietor CPA, who “really let me get involved.”
Quinnipiac University students “rarely get out of here without an internship or some sort of practical experience,” says director of career services Patricia Nielsen, who works with employers of all sizes to develop job descriptions promoted at quintern@qiuinnipiac.edu.
Internships involve a three-way agreement among student, employer and faculty member. Nielsen notes a new bachelor's degree program in entrepreneurship beginning this fall will likely spur an even greater demand to match employers with interns.
Some schools are actively working to elicit more area business involvement in internships. Yale, for example, is planning a series of networking events this summer for current interns, alumni and local business leaders. These events are aimed at forging closer ties between the university and the business community.
“We want to create opportunities for students who are working in the area and students actively engaged in the job search,” explains Coleen Singer, interim director of Yale's career development office. “We want companies to be aware that we are in their own backyard, and there are many people here who would love to work for a small company with a lot of responsibility.”
Such proactive efforts are encouraging to the CSBDC's Rivera, who says he would “love to work” with three or four Yale MBA students.
“I'd have them working on financial analysis to make sure local businesses are successful when they're going for bank loans. I'd also have them work on business plans and strategies to help these businesses grow.”
Rivera sees a great need for the chamber of commerce and other regional business organizations to coordinate efforts to match interns with small businesses, and possibly even provide funding for the interns.
Odell Stewart, manager for the Business Connection, an arm of Empower New Haven, agrees that networking could enable interns to help solve the labor problems of small employers in the region.
“The demand from business owners is huge, and interns can help in a variety of ways, from technical assistance to feasibility and marketing studies,” Stewart says.
During the spring semester, for example, several Quinnipiac interns worked on “very valuable research” for a business plan for a summer festival project in Fair Haven with a technical adviser at the Business Connection. Stewart says his office “could probably handle four or five interns at a time” from different schools in the area.
“Part of our charter,” Stewart says, “is to reach out to each and every one of the colleges and see if we can develop a system to utilize these students.”
Starting from Scratch
For small employers seeking to hire interns, advance planning is most likely to lead to a positive experience - and possibly even to a productive permanent hire.
A resource for strategic planning, College Internships: Solutions for Your Staffing Problems, a how-to pamphlet by Jenny Hart Danowki (LRP Publications, 1999) contains checklists and sample forms, as do Web sites such as at naceweb.org, internweb.com and internparnerships.com.
Here are a few steps to help assure success in hiring and developing a fruitful internship program:
Preparation
- Decide how many interns you need, what kind of jobs can be performed by them, and what skills and knowledge are needed. Choose actual company projects, which should be challenging and provide realistic training and work experience.
- Develop job descriptions containing learning goals and detailed plans for completion of assignments.
- Determine what type of staff support will be necessary for effective supervision, preferably veteran staffers who can guide interns as mentors.
- Determine whether you can pay interns. The National Association of Colleges & Employers (NACE) recommends some sort of compensation to attract top candidates, either in salary or other perks such as recognition lunches or company T-shirts. But be sure to check with legal counsel to make sure unpaid interns qualify as trainees under the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act, which stipulates, among other things, that the student doesn't replace a regular employee and has not been promised a job when the internship ends.
Recruiting
- Post intern jobs on your own Web site, or on other sites specializing in student internships or your type of business.
- Call career services offices at area colleges and universities, particularly those offering training relevant to your business needs. Be sure to clarify what the school needs from you.
- Participate in campus job fairs and career days, or offer to host an on-campus company information session.
Hiring
- Screen interns as you would any other job candidate.
- Provide adequate orientation and training so interns can do the job properly.
- Provide constructive feedback.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
