Why We Started Hiring Interns Before We Were Ready

Small companies often delay hiring interns because they assume they need a programme first. We did the same, and we were wrong about what actually mattered. Here is what we learned running three cohorts.

The mistake: treating an internship as a favour

Our first cohort was framed internally as an exposure opportunity for students. The result was predictable — nobody owned the interns' work, tasks were whatever happened to be lying around, and two of the four had almost nothing to show at the end.

The reframing that fixed it was simple: an internship is a role, and roles have deliverables. Once we asked "what would not get done if this person were not here", the work got real and the experience got better.

What you actually need before the first intern arrives

Not a programme. Three things:

A named person who is responsible. Not a committee. One person who notices if the intern is stuck on Wednesday.

Work that has a defined end. Something that can be finished in the internship period and pointed at afterwards. Open-ended "support the team" work leaves a student with nothing to describe in their next interview.

A first week that is planned. Access, an introduction, a small task that can be completed on day two. Most of the difference between a good and bad internship is set in the first five days.

That is it. Everything else can be improvised.

On paying interns

We pay all our interns. Not primarily as ethics, though it is that too — as a filter on ourselves. When you are paying someone, you assign them real work, because otherwise the cost is visible. Unpaid interns get neglected work, because neglect is free.

If a small company genuinely cannot pay, the honest version is a shorter, clearly scoped project with a fee attached, not three unpaid months.

What we get out of it

Roughly a third of our interns have become full-time colleagues. That is not the main return, though. The main return is that explaining our system to a newcomer every few months exposes how much of it only exists in someone's head. Interns are the best documentation audit a small company can run.

Where employers lose good candidates

Two places, consistently.

Slow response. Students are applying to many things while managing coursework. A two-week silence after an interview loses candidates to companies that replied in three days.

Vague listings. If the listing does not say what the person will actually work on, strong candidates skip it and you get volume instead of fit. Specificity in the listing is the cheapest improvement available to any employer.

The part that took longest to learn

Interns do not need to be protected from real work. They need to be protected from unclear work. Given a defined problem, a named person to ask, and honest feedback, students at this stage do considerably more than most companies expect of them.