As has been noted numerous times on this very blog, the key to surviving the downturn for many start-ups is minimising costs and bootstrapping. Unnecessary expenditure can sink a business faster than you can say ‘overdraft’.
However, companies must be ready to expand and not stagnate. Getting an extra staff member on board can be crucial to meeting any increase in demand for your product or service, particularly as the economy returns to a growth phase. It is crucial that you are well-placed to take advantage of any upturn.
The answer for many businesses may well be hiring an intern. Interns represent very effective, but inexpensive, labour. With a plethora of talented graduates currently flooding the employment market, striving to get ahead of their peers in the employability stakes, there is a wealth of young talent straining at the leash to prove their worth in the working world.
What students and graduates lack in experience they more than make up for in enthusiasm and willingness to learn. What would you give to have a staff member genuinely excited at the prospect of just being involved with the every day running of a business? Moreover an intern is something of a blank canvas in terms of working practice: yet to form bad habits and ready to be moulded in your own image. Well...they won’t have bad habits.
Furthermore, taking a student or graduate on a placement does not commit your business to a draining annual salary. Most internships last about three to six months and usually only attract expenses or alternatively minimal remuneration. If both parties have found the arrangement beneficial the company and candidate may choose to extend the placement beyond the initial period. The employer may then be in a position to offer a full-time role.
Should the intern go permanent their host company will also have succeeded in circumnavigating one of the major obstacles facing SMEs looking for graduate talent: the black-hole that is the recruitment arms of the big boys of the business world. Your Accentures, Deloittes and the like have such a ubiquitous presence on the campuses of all the major universities that many students fail to look beyond the generic programmes being shoved in their faces.
An added bonus for employers is that they get to ‘test-drive’ graduates. Internships separate the wheat from the chaff, negating the risk associated with inexperience and ensuring that your business is not left with someone who is all talk and no action.
So why not enlist an intern to boost your business – can you afford not to?
Andrew Scherer works for Inspiring Interns which specialises in placing bright students and graduates with start-ups and small businesses
