Bridging the Gap Between Employers and Interns

Everyone knows that today’s twenty-something employees are ambitious, motivated, and dedicated to changing the business world for the better. However, it is hard for young employees to understand the importance of marketing themselves, getting to know the right people, adding tangible value to the organization, learning transferable skills, and charting their own career paths. Last week, I did a special webinar from Intern Bridge in which I discussed how to employ core strategies that make a difference in the degree to which twenty-somethings contribute to the bottom line and end up staying with organizations for the long-haul. If you’d like to access the archive, you can do so here. 

Intern Bridge is a new partner of mine.  It was founded by Richard Bottner, a young twenty-something himself who was just selected as one of Business Week’s Young Entrepreneurs of the Year.  Says the Business Week article:

The seed for Intern Bridge was planted after Richard, then majoring in human resources at Babson College, volunteered at a school conference for HR professionals in 2005. He was surprised to find that most were clueless about what students expected from internships. Bottner, who had himself endured a lackluster internship experience, saw a need to bridge the gap between companies and the student interns they recruit.

His business started as an independent study project: Bottner surveyed students at Babson about what they wanted from internships and then wrote a 10-page paper for academic credit. Realizing the data he'd collected might be useful to HR managers, he expanded the survey to include 35 New England schools and started querying companies. Bottner got responses from 7,000 students and 235 employers.

The survey is now nationwide. Intern Bridge uses the data in the survey to sell research, publications, webinars, workshops, and consulting for companies that want to improve their internship programs. "What started out as this little survey is now the largest internship survey in the country," Bottner says. He expects revenue to hit $100,000 this year, most of which he plans to put toward internship improvement projects and research on unpaid internships.

Good for you, Rich.  Here’s to a long and successful entrepreneurial career. 

Comments

[Ashley]

What a great idea. My biggest regret in college is not taking advantage of the internships I had, and really learning and forming connections. I can't wait to see more companies really teaching their interns and training them to be future long-term employees instead of doing the dirty work.

can't wait to see this business expand further :)

[Alexandra Levit]

Hi Ashley, welcome to WCW, great to see you. I too appreciate that the tide is turning when it comes to internships. I think it's because today's twenty-somethings aren't willing to accept "grunt only" positions. Good for them.