Fuel business growth employ an intern/apprentice [kwiqq]

Posted on | September 30, 2008 | View Comments

Image via Wikipedia

Investors and mentors always talk about the hockey stick in your business i.e. exponential rise. This hockey sticks in business can mean fantastic things like more profit, staff, clients etc but could also mean recruitment, marketing (to advertise the growth), sales (sustain the growth). All of which means a lot of work.

With the current state of the market recruitment of permanent staff needs to be thought through carefully. This is where interns come in as a sigh of relief. They take the pressure of staff and can help a business achieve its goals at little or no costs. We started using interns really early on in the business for sales, marketing, research, lead generation and currently programming. Some reasons why we like to recruit interns:

1. Very cost effective. Most of them come to learn a skills i.e. programming, language etc. Hence are happy to trade off experience for expensive salaries.
2. Generally very enthusiastic and motivated, will go to any level to learn. Having just finished some sort of education degree, this comes natural to them.
3. Remember in the process you are training professionals and entrepreneurs of tomorrow hence helping the economy
4. You can apply for government grants to fund interns to stay at your company
5. It really (and I can’t emphasis this enough) help your cash flow

Although this would require you to be a little patient as generally this is the first time the intern is working in a professional environment. Most of them will require your valuable time in the first week to show them around. Although within a few days from starting at your company they would pay for themselves.

A few things we learnt whilst employing interns:

1. Atleast conduct a telephone interview before you employ them. It really helps you understand the candidate and carve out a role for them. You will be surprised how many companies don’t do that.
2. Every intern is different and hence they will not fit into a generic job. You will have to see their interest and find them an appropriate position in the company.
3. I always felt that it is important that they really enjoy the job they do. Having started my career as an intern myself, I know that employers who are passionate about their business can transfer that to their interns which increases the interns productivity

Some sources to enquire about internship:

UK wide: Apprenticeships and Shell STEP

Brighton and Hove based apprentice: StagesUK and Gulliver Experiences.

Related articles

• Services Startup Cash Flow Trick!
• Why you should find a headhunter you hate [Tim The IT Guy]
• How to Create Online Leads
• Should your startup release financial data?

Comments