Gone are the days when internships were only crucial for students or college graduates. Today it’s a two-way road. If students are striving to intern at top organizations, then even companies are also utilizing internships in their favor. Tech companies are using internships to attract young talent at low cost and retain the right ones after a series of on-job assessments.

Looking at the intern conversion trend released by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), in 2018 alone, offer acceptance rate after the internship was 77.3 percent, and the conversion rate touched 45.6 percent.

Although CoVID-19 has put a stop on the planned internship programs, chances are once we pass the pandemic phase, internships will be on the rise again. Companies would judiciously spend to hire new talent. As a result, internships would come handy in such scenarios. If you are still apprehensive about instituting a well thought out internship program, here is a list of 5 reasons that will address your inhibitions.

1.  Tap on Young Talent Pool

Organizations looking forward to recruiting employees who can fuel their growth should capitalize on young talents. Full of energy and freshness, and a zeal to prove themselves, young talent brings a lot of freshness into the ongoing processes. They infuse fresh perspective into the existing processes which is full of curiosity, knowledge, and the fire to innovate.

Especially in the tech sphere, when the trends are changing at a lightning speed, young talent, and their grasp on technology proves to be an asset for the tech firms.

You must build internship programs to capture these young talents who are about to finish college and are looking for avenues to bolster their skills.  Acquiring young talent in this phase helps you seamlessly mold their skills to suit your organizational requirement. With vigor to learn and passion to make their mark, they speedily brace all that is taught resulting in increased overall organizational productivity.

2. Expand Your Brand Reach

Even if you do not plan to hire interns full time, you can still offer them a meaningful corporate experience with short-term internship programs. These internship opportunities help you expand your brand name amongst the emerging talents who will soon be out there in the job market.

These interns will be your greatest PR assets in search of new hires. Especially during campus recruitments. Interns can spread the word about your brand with their internship experience and help you attract quality candidates with their brand advocacy. Nothing can beat the promotion of an intern who has firsthand experience of your organization and its culture.

3. Close Skill Gap

According to Code.org, less than 43,000 students graduated with computer science degrees in 2016, even though more than half a million jobs were available for people in the computing fields.

Clearly, there is a huge expectation vs reality gap when it comes to hiring people with tech skills. Numerous studies have also suggested that the skill gap is the biggest disappointment employers have to experience during the hiring process.

The only way to mend this gap is to train more and more talent for the required skills. Guided mentorship and on-job internships have proved to be successful ways to bridge the gap. In place of hiring experienced employees with a huge skill gap, hire interns, and train them for job-specific skills through dedicated learning programs.

Training employees for the exact expected skills close the required skill gap for your tasks and accelerates the overall business productivity.

4.  Build a Talent Pipeline

Internship programs also yield a pipeline of talent resources that can be utilized in the future at the time of recruitment. Therefore, you must keep a track record of all intern applicants in your ATS and fetch these records at the time of recruitment. In place of throwing darts in the dark, use the intern database to channelize your recruitment in the right direction.

Also, approach these interns and conduct on-campus recruitment in their colleges. It will help you expand your brand recognition and get hold of a diverse range of recruits every year.

Read More: 5 Strategies to Build Your Tech Talent Pipeline

5. Acquire Low-Cost Labour

Average hourly wage for interns was $19.05 for 2019, lower than the approximately $27.90 national average for all other full-time employees. That’s more than 30% discount. And there are many organizations in the market offering unpaid internships as well depending upon their work and needs. However, unpaid internships often don’t lead to job offers.

Moreover, you are not obligated to hire every intern. So, depending upon a series of on-job tests and assessments you can hire intern that best fits your job requirement. Assessing and hiring interns on their on-job performance gives you access to the right fit and saves you a lot of recruiting time and cost.