The idea of interns as underpaid workhorses and company-wide coffee-fetchers should already be long gone.
Rather, your internship programs should provide relevant value to the participants and your company. Interns can serve many purposes and can be a great resource for your organization–especially when it comes to diversity.
For HR managers and recruiters who are focused on creating a diverse and inclusive work environment, interns are the best solution.
Interns and Diversity - A Perfect Match
If your organization has a holistic diversity statement, then it should be easy to determine how interns fit into the equation. When hiring interns, think about how you would hire any other entry-level talent.
Just like the talent that you source for full-hire positions, your interns can provide unique perspectives when hired from diverse backgrounds. Interns provide diversity on several fronts, with the most notable being age. This diversity leads to better work environments, fresh ideas, and new ways of looking at long term problems.
Treating your internship program as a training ground for the next generation of top talent in your organization will ensure that you take the future of your organization seriously. In order to promote diversity in your internship program, you have to think strategically about your company and your industry. Analyze and determine the problem areas when it comes to your hiring practices.
Once you identify these pain points in your talent sourcing, you can move forward with creating a strategy for how to overcome these obstacles in creating diversity in your internship program.
