Interns Want Real Work Experiences
What do you think of when you think of an intern or recent college graduate who is working in an entry level job? If you're a Boomer or even Gen X'er, you probably think of someone who is grossly overqualified for the mailroom work that they're doing while they're paying their dues. Yet today's college students and recent graduates won't stand for doing such work because it is not directly related to their career goals. For what it is worth, I agree with them.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune had a great story in today's paper about Medtronic, one of the world's greatest medical device manufacturers. (And no, they're not a client but they should be.) Medtronic hires 150 summer interns, most of which are engineers or business students who attend the nation's top technical and MBA schools. So what was great about this story about Medtronic's internship program? The program itself.
Medtronic's internship program is designed to provide its interns with a taste of the real world and therefore to provide Medtronic's hiring managers with accurate and complete information on the abilities of these candidates. These highly skilled students are not being hired for a career in the mailroom and Medtronic's management is wise enough to understand that sticking them in the mailroom will not provide the hiring managers with the information that they would need in order to determine whether the interns should be converted to permanent employees upon graduation. So Medtronic assigns to the interns tough challenges, such as assessing the pacemaker market in China or a new use for an existing medical device. The interns have frequent access to top management and are entrusted with confidential information in an industry that can only charitably be described as being extremely competitive.
The results? Most interns are offered permanent employment upon graduation and an astounding 82 percent of the technical interns accept. By way of comparison, only 44 percent of interns in the industry receive such offers, so Medtronic is almost doubling that rate. For interns in the leadership portion of the program, 62 percent accept offers versus the industry average of 44 percent. While not quite as good as the technical internship rate, 62 versus 44 percent is still a fantastic improvement.
Why do so many more Medtronic interns accept their offers than in the rest of the industry? Because their work is valued by Medtronic and they are receiving real world experience. They know what it will be like to work for Medtronic upon graduation and they like it. Awesome.
Leave a comment