Set Up a Virtual Internship Program

 

Fri 07 May 2021

Set Up a Virtual Internship Program
Internship programs play a critical role in many companies, helping develop future workers’ skills as well as your company’s talent pipeline. How should you adapt your program to a virtual landscape? Here are three steps to take.

    (1) Listen, listen, listen. Treat your interns and internal stakeholders like customers and proactively try to understand their wants and needs. Use these insights to shape your program.
    (2) Create substitutes for in-person engagement. Conduct an extensive training session to make introductions between the interns and their managers, provide an overview of the program, share best practices for remote work, and set expectations. You may even want to create an intern buddy system that pairs two participants for the duration of the program.
    (3) Take advantage of remote-work benefits. The virtual setting offers ways to bolster diversity and inclusivity by removing geographic or accessibility limitations of the physical office.

This tip is adapted from “How to Create a Successful Virtual Internship Program,” by Sandra Rivera