Recruiter Top 10: Tools to Build and Maintain a Great Internship Program
Welcome toTop 10, Recruiter.com’s weekly rundown of the best of the best in recruiting! Every Friday, we release a list of some of our favorite people, things, and ideas dominating the industry. From awesome tech tools and cool companies to great books and powerful trends, no stone in the recruiting space will be left unturned.
This Week: Top 10 Tools to Build and Maintain a Great Internship Program
Internship programs can be excellent ways to build talent pipelines that deliver young candidates straight to your most crucial roles – but only if they’re run properly. A slapdash, poorly operated internship program won’t produce any meaningful results and may even actively harm your employer brand among college students and recent graduates.
To help you avoid such a nasty outcome, we’ve put together a list of 10 great tools for attracting interns and making your program a world-class one. Check them out below:
1. University Beyond
University Beyond aims to connect students with opportunities at cutting-edge startups and respected Fortune 500 companies alike. More than 250 brands – including Airbnb, Seamless, Amazon, and Starbucks – use University Beyond to recruit and manage brand ambassadors and summer interns. Employers can share their jobs with students at more than 1,000 campuses for free, and University Beyond’s on-site dashboard allows employers to handle task management, communication, training, and reviews from a central location. Thanks to a pay-per-hire (instead of per applicant) pricing scheme, employers can be sure they’re getting the most bang for their buck.
2. Handshake
With more than 3.5 million students, 170 universities, and 120,000 employers using Handshake, the platform is a thriving hub for young talent and the employers seeking them out. One of Handshake’s most handy features (get it?) is the ability to post jobs to dozens of university job boards at once. Other useful features include on-site student messaging, an integrated career fair management system, and seriously powerful applicant filtering.
(Thanks to Steve Benson, founder and CEO of Badger Maps, and Mary Fox, head of product marketing at FR8Star, who both pointed us in Handshake’s direction.)
3. WhatsApp
If you’re looking for a way to easily connect with potential interns or your existing intern team, HR consultant and writer Christy Hopkins of Fit Small Business suggests WhatsApp as “a popular place to hold recruiting forums.” Many students and recent grads use the app already to chat with their friends. Rather than asking them to download totally new apps just to talk with you, meet them where they already are. Create group chats where candidates can ask questions about your program or existing interns can stay in touch with one another and company/team leaders. Plus, WhatsApp features end-to-end encryption, meaning communication between you and your interns is secure.
4. WayUp
Focused particularly on jobs and internships for college students and recent grads, WayUp offers not only a platform for advertising your jobs but also a collection of very useful filters that ensure employers only hear from the kinds of candidates they want. When companies use WayUp, they can set certain limitations on how many and what kind of applications they receive – so, for instance, if an employer wanted to only hire candidates with certain skills or GPAs, they can set it so that only candidates who meet that criteria will see the post.
WayUp also has a section of its site dedicated to internship advice. This bit of content marketing does not only help WayUp attract users, but also helps build an audience for employers’ posts. Students and recent grads come to learn about internships, but they’ll stick around to see what your company has to offer.
5. Vocate
In addition to Handshake, Badger Maps’ Steve Benson also suggested we check out Vocate – and we’re glad he did.
Vocate describes itself as “the technological evolution of the university career center.” In short, that means it’s a one-stop career shop for students and recent graduates, offering exercises to help them figure out their career paths and matching them with opportunities based on the results.
According to Benson, Vocate “specifically focuses on finding opportunities for students, and they really help us manage a lot of the recruiting process and save us a ton of time. They’ve found great and motivated talent for us, and we’ve even hired some of the interns we got through them full-time!”
6. WizeHive
WizeHive offers a number of business software solutions, but it’s the company’s internship management software we’re interested in.
Samantha Cortez of UK healthcare startup DrFelix calls WizeHive an “internship management software that gives you all the nuts and bolts you need to manage a comprehensive internship program.” Cortez, who initially called our attention to WizeHive, told us the software “has worked very well for us when we’re hiring for a position that can receive more than 100 applicants. It allows us to track those applications, mark progress in the interview process, and rate and share applicant details.”
7. WCN
While not specifically designed for internship programs, WCN’s recruitment solution has helped major organizations build and maintain highly successful internship programs.
For example, communications services group WPP, which employs 190,000 people in 112 countries, uses WCN to run its internship program. Last year, the company offered 5,378 paid internships, which it filled via WCN’s applicant tracking system. Featuring smooth workflows, an engaging candidate-centric interface, and video interviewing through a partnership with Cammio, WCN served as WPP’s internship headquarters.
If it works for a massive organization of WPP’s size, WCN can handle whatever an employer throws at it.
8. HireVue
One major difficulty when it comes to hiring interns is that candidates often have very little work experience. That means an organization can’t rely on resumes or references much, if at all, to filter candidates.
This is where video interviewing software like HireVue comes into play. An organization can’t possibly bring all of its internship candidates in for in-person interviews, but it can ask all of them to record short video interviews. That way, an employer can get a much better sense of each candidate’s personality, communication skills, creativity, and problem-solving abilities.
In short, video interviews can be great ways to fill the information gaps that often arise when recruiting students and recent grads.
9. Glassdoor
Regardless of whether or not you use Glassdoor to promote your internship openings, it’s going to be a part of your intern recruitment strategy. Today’s candidates don’t go blindly into an employer – instead, they conduct heavy research beforehand. Glassdoor is going to be one of their stops, so it’s in your best interest to maintain a positive and engaging employer brand on the site.
Simply put: You can’t afford to ignore Glassdoor if you’re recruiting students and recent grads in any capacity.
10. Intern Queen
Founded by career and internship expert Lauren Berger, Intern Queen is a massive educational resource for people seeking internships – as well as a job board for advertising internships. As we mentioned above, employers should use this content marketing to their advantage and post their internships on Intern Queen. The site attracts a steady stream of ambitious young candidates, and it would be a shame not to leverage the platform.