Internships
HOST A UA INTERN
An internship is any carefully monitored work experience in which a student has intentional learning objectives and goals and reflects actively on what they are learning throughout the experience.
What makes a quality internship?
- An intern must learn skills that are transferable to other employment settings and not just be work a regular employee would routinely perform.
- The experience must have a defined beginning and end, and a position description with desired qualifications.
- An internship includes intentional onboarding, ongoing supervision, and frequent feedback by an experienced supervisor who models professional and ethical behavior.
Benefits of hiring a UA Intern
- Test-drive the talent: An internship is an intensive interview in disguise. Hiring students as interns is the most effective way to evaluate their potential as future employees. When organizations “try-out” a candidate for the summer, they make fewer mistakes when it comes to full-time staffing. Organizations with internship programs avoid the pitfall of training a new hire, only to discover that they are not a good fit for the company.
- Bring a fresh perspective to your work: Interns can help with projects or tasks that organizations struggle to complete. A student accepts an internship with the hope of accomplishing something significant and developing skills that will help them with future employment. Give them real, meaningful work that will help your organization run more smoothly, accomplish more, or be more successful. Their effort and fresh perspectives will help your organization be more productive even as you invest time into developing a quality internship program.
- Increase employee-retention rates: The proof for the test-driving your talent theory is in the positive employee-retention figures: According to NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-Op Survey, former interns of an organization are more likely to be retained as full-time entry-level hires at one year (70.7%) and at five years (54.3%) than employees who interned elsewhere (57.3% at one year and 41.1% at five) or employers who had no internship (46.2% at one year and 35.8% at five).
How Can I Hire a UA Intern?
How do I hire an intern?
Post your internship opportunities on Handshake, the job board for UA students and graduates.
If you are hiring for multiple positions, you may also want to attend a career fair on campus.
Do I have to pay an intern? How much should I pay an intern?
It is typically easier to recruit students to paid internships, and paid internships allow a more diverse population of students to apply because many students need to have paid employment.
Internships may pay as little as minimum wage, but internships requiring specific technical skillsets can pay up to $30 an hour.
If you are considering an unpaid internship, please review the U.S. Department of Labor fact sheet on unpaid internships. The student, not the employer, has to be the primary beneficiary of the internship for an internship at a for-profit company to be unpaid. Otherwise, the intern would be considered an employee that is entitled to wages. The fact sheet identifies the factors that determine who is the primary beneficiary of the internship relationship.
What if I am offering an internship for credit?
It is the student's responsibility to decide if they want to get academic credit for an internship. The student will work with their department to fill out the required forms and ensure their internship meets the requirements to be awarded credit. Typically the internship must be related to the students' course of study, students must work 45 hours per credit awarded, and the internship supervisor and student should agree on goals and learning outcomes for the internship.
The employer does not initiate this process, and internships for credit can be either paid or unpaid. Students seeking academic credit for their internship will work with their site supervisor to fill out the Internship Work Plan found on this Registrar webpage.
Please note: At present, host sites and students involved in internships for academic credit requiring in-person work must complete an Assessment of Workplace Risk in addition to the Internship Work Plan. This policy is in place until further notice.
The Arizona Internship Council and Student Engagement & Career Development have partnered to develop guidance and support for instructors in implementing these changes for internship courses in particular. Please see COVID-19 Mitigation Plan & Internship Box folder for more information. Student Engagement & Career Development offers online professional skills content for instructor consideration in responding to the challenge of offering alternative educational experiences for required internship credit in the event that remote internships are not available to a student.