Considering welcoming an intern into your organisation? You’re not the only company in the current climate opening their doors to new internship or expanded programs.

The popularity of interns has grown in Australia with many companies recognising the importance of providing work integrated learning opportunities to fresh graduates and students. 

The benefits for interns are vast – they can build professional networks, observe professionals in action and gain awareness of how a corporate environment really works.

And equally for company’s there are numerous positive impacts from hosting an intern which can help support a business’ values and corporate responsibility initiatives, as outlined below:

Increases cultural diversity 

Welcoming an intern, via a professional year program, means you are welcoming cultural diversity into your organisation. Our interns come from a wide array of backgrounds including China, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Colombia, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Brazil. 

Our programs focus on helping these interns understand the Australian workplace and the differences which can exist compared to the workplace in their home country. At the same time, Australian host companies can also learn greatly from interns and the experience they bring from overseas. In many instances this can be a great learning curve especially for a SME organisation which may not have encountered a variety of cultures before. 

Provides management development opportunities 

A key piece of advice we give new host companies is to allocate an up-and-coming leader as the supervisor for the intern. 

This works in two ways: The up-and-coming leader should have more time to guide an intern which provides them an opportunity to develop their mentoring and coaching skills, while also allowing the intern the opportunity to learn closely from a supervisor. This method also ensures the supervisor can gain experience mentoring/leading which can prove useful for their future career path.   

Brings fresh eyes – New perspectives 

Interns bring a fresh set of eyes to even the most embedded processes. Having an intern join your business gives you an ideal chance to gain an outsider’s perspective on your processes. 

Most interns are eager, full of energy and bursting with ideas. Allowing interns to become involved with projects will enable your company to benefit from their enthusiasm and fresh perspective. This also helps the intern as they can evidence fresh ideas they have given to projects, and gain experience and confidence. 

 Fulfils corporate social responsibility 

International students in particular struggle to enter the job market within their area of study here in Australia. A key message from recruiters is that this is due to lack of local experience. 

By offering internship opportunities your company will be helping our students obtain their first foot on the career ladder here in Australia as well as providing a platform for interns to learn about corporate Australia and the Australian workplace.   

Thus, it’s easy to see why more and more companies are opening their doors to new internship or expanded programs given the benefits are so vast for both employer and intern alike.

If you’d like to explore an internships program at your business, click here for more information, or reach out to our friendly team today!