The Best Internship Recruitment Strategies & Tech Tools in 2024

“My advice for young people is, study what you love and intern in what you do.” – Eva Chen

Internships are a huge win for both employers and college students. Students are gaining the experience and knowledge they need to pursue their careers while employers are getting their energy and new ideas—all while developing new talent and building a pipeline of prospective employees.

If your organization wants to hire interns, you need to have a dedicated intern hiring process in place that includes the right strategies and tech tools to reach this next generation. Here are our top internship recruitment strategies and tech tools to get you started!

How & Where to Start Recruiting Interns

The first step in hiring interns is finding them. Once you find them, you have to attract them. Here are a few tried and true ways you can quickly build your intern pipeline:

1. Become besties with college faculty: First and foremost, get out there and build relationships with educational institutions. Do your research on each institution’s degree programs and identify which major best aligns with your internship. Reach out to faculty involved in the program and sell your internship program. If you build the right relationships, programs will feed you their top candidates.
2. Go where the students are: Show up at campus hiring events and career fairs, in-person and virtual. Come prepared with an engaging employer brand to attract top talent. And get creative… pop up a monitor and stream a video of all the benefits of your internship program with real testimonials from past interns, and print out scan cards that go straight to your social media sites (meet Gen Z where Gen Z is at), ect. Make a name for yourself at these events and the interns will be running your direction.
3. Go digital to attract digital: Today’s college students are true digital natives. You will find them on social media platforms like Instagram, X/Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and online job boards. Reach out to them on these sites where they are actively engaging. Be authentic and stand out from the crowd!
4. Use what you’ve got: Employee referrals are a top source for recruiting talent, so why not include intern talent in your employee referral program? It is cost-effective, a time saver, and a proven successful source. (Take a look at our blog that gives you everything you need to know about creating and implementing a successful employee referral program!)
5. Make it compelling: Craft compelling internship job descriptions, including objectives and requirements, that resonate with your target audience. This is a great time to take full advantage of interviewstream’s AI Recruiting Assistant to aid in writing the content that will get the attention of your potential interns. Remember, the generation you are recruiting expects clear, concise, honest information that does not leave them guessing. If they have to guess, they will scroll right past you.

Leveraging HR Tech Tools of Intern Recruitment

Since how and where to recruit interns is checked off, now you need the right tools, tools that will streamline your recruitment process and enhance the candidate experience while improving the decision-making process for you.

• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): Most companies today rely on an ATS to help them hire new employees. The same should go for interns. Not only does it speed up your hiring process, it stores all your candidate data and tracks them throughout the hiring pipeline. AND integrating your ATS with your video interviewing software creates a seamless process.
• Video Interviewing: This highly active, tech-savvy generation of potential interns wants authentic, relatable, and personal content. Video interviewing technology can create just that. And they want to access it anytime, anywhere. Your screening interviews should be relevant and personal. You can reinforce your brand and use their data (name, etc) from the very start. They also crave the flexibility video interviewing allows. Video interviews also have the unique benefit of bridging any geographical gaps. Many of your intern candidates may be at colleges and universities during the school year but want to obtain an internship position close to home, where they reside for the summer. Video interviews, both on demand interviews and live video interviews, will allow you to reach them and not miss out on your top candidates.
• Advanced Interview Scheduler: Everyone is busy… Not only is it time-consuming on your end to work through manually scheduling interviews the hiring process, but this generation of potential interns is often running on fumes, balancing school, work, jobs, personal interests, etc. We want things simple and so do they. Interview scheduling tools allow candidates to schedule their interview from a phone, laptop, or any device with a browser. Most candidates schedule within 24 hours. Long gone are the days of back-and-forth emails that go on and on for days. Using a scheduling tool makes your life easier, your candidates’ lives easier, allows you to reach more candidates quicker, and creates the positive candidate experience this generation expects.

Utilize interviewstream to Invest in your Future

Recruiting interns is essential for nurturing talent and fostering organizational growth. Understanding the importance of internships and implementing effective recruitment strategies is crucial. Also, a strong understanding of the generation you’re recruiting is key.

Let interviewstream provide you with the tools you need to recruit the next generation of interns.
Reach out to an expert today and get started on building an intern recruitment process and upgrading your hiring tools to secure the candidates that will shape the future of your company.

About The Author

Monique Mahler is the CEO of interviewstream. She is an avid researcher of facts, a self proclaimed marketing geek, and an equestrian in her spare time.