Are micro-internship marketplaces the same or different from project-based marketplaces? with Kristin Schrader of Parker Dewey.

Create, manage, and work with Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces.

Each week, Steven Rothberg, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of College Recruiter, and Peter M. Zollman, Founder of the AIM Group, along with guests from the world’s leading job sites, analyze news about general, niche, and aggregator job board and recruitment marketplace sites.

Today’s guest, Kristin Schrader, is the Director of Partnerships at Parker Dewey, a platform that facilitates micro-internships. Micro-internships are short-term, paid professional projects that allow students and recent grads to explore different positions and company cultures.

Kristin joins this episode to talk more about the goal of micro-internships from the perspective of both employers and interns. These micro internships are mostly remote and allow students to have more access to professional opportunities despite any geographic barriers. Parker Dewey ensures that the internships they offer will compensate fairly. Paid internships often lead to better quality interns and eventually, better quality hires.

Listen to the full episode here:

TRANSCRIPT

Steven (00:09):

Welcome to the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast. I’m Stephen Rothberg, the founder of College Recruiter, job search site at College Recruiter. We believe that every student in recent grad deserves a great career.

Peter (00:23):

And I’m Peter Zollman, founding Principle of the AIM Group, the leading global business intelligence service for marketplaces and classified advertising companies. We consult with recruitment marketplaces, companies and publish aim group, recruitment intelligence, and a free weekly digest. We also host the annual Global Rec Buzz conference.

Steven (00:44):

This is the podcast for you to learn more about how to create, manage, and work with general niche and aggregator job boards and recruitment marketplaces. Hey, Peter, it is great to be with you today and not just because today is any other day, but I, I hear that there’s kind of like a bit of a birthday party going on. Something about the recruitment intelligence report is celebrating its birth

Peter (01:10):

Birthday. We’ve been publishing it now for a little more than a year, and I’m very pleased to note that you were our first paying client and you remain a paying client, but we’ve been publishing it for more than a year now, which means we’ve put out about 50, 55 major articles and put out the digest every week with the who’s doing what and who’s doing things with funding and financial results and so forth and so on. Who’s sleeping with whom, who’s merging, who buying, who’s selling, you know, those kinds of things. The stuff that people really find interesting. Shockingly, so we’ve been doing it for about a year now, and happily the number of clients subscribers continues to grow and we get a lot of good feedback.

Steven (01:59):

Yeah, I, I’ve definitely been, definitely been a happiest subscriber. What what I like the most about the vast majority of articles is that it goes well beyond the press release. And most of what I see online about what this recruitment marketplace is doing or what that job board is doing, or what some VC is investing in, it’s just, it’s sort of like that high level, like just comes from press release. But as long as you guys continue to publish the, why is this happening, what are the ramifications of this happening then you can deposit my check every month.

Peter (02:36):

Well, sounds good. It’s a credit card payment, but we won’t talk about dinosaurs who think they’re paying by check. But yeah, it’s remarkable to me. We’ve got a team of people all around the world and I joke, but I’m serious that only 30 to 40% of what we put in there is going to be of, of interest to any particular individual, because some of it is, you know, Serbia or South Africa or Australia or whatever, but often those are the things that are happening that you didn’t learn about from the news releases. And if you’re not trying to be super parochial, you can find something that you can put to use in some way. Not every week, not every issue, but enough that apparently people keep it. We’ve had very, very, very low drop off rate and the number keeps climbing, which is always a good thing. Let’s get to our guests because this was not intended to be a commercial

Steven (03:40):

<Laugh> this episode brought to you today by No, so today’s guest I’m very excited about is Christian Schrader. She is the director of partnerships at Parker Dewey, and they somewhat like the organization that, that I founded, college recruiter. They’re dedicated to making the path from college to career as equitable as possible. And what they do that’s really different than most job boards, recruitment marketplaces, et cetera, is that they partner with hundreds, I think it’s over 500 colleges and nonprofits. They connect students with employers via micro internships. And we are gonna dig into what the heck a micro internship is in this, in this conversation. But before we do that, Kristen, let me welcome you to the show.

Kristen (04:36):

Thank you so much.

Peter (04:38):

Micro internships, what the heck are those

Kristen (04:42):

Very fair question. So how we define it is a short term paid professional opportunity designed for college students or even recent graduates to do real work on behalf of busy professionals. So if I kind unpack that a little bit, short term meaning generally 10 to 40 hours, they could be a bit shorter or longer, but that’s usually where most of them fall and they’re all paid and they’re all professional so that the students are gaining some real world experience that they can put on their resume Companies also have some skin in the game because they too are working with students to execute a project that they, you know, otherwise would have on their long, long, long to-do

Peter (05:24):

List. So you have to set one of these up by knowing which project you’re going to give to Xtu and have a projects that that’s been sitting on the shelf that you wanna turn over to somebody and say, here’s the project, here’s what our outcome is. Now, go do

Kristen (05:43):

It. Yeah, I mean, if you look at your own desk right now, I would imagine if yours looks anything like mine, there’s a lot of stuff that is just not gonna get done today. Whether that be I need to update XYZ on some sort of website, I need to write some article, I need to crunch some data, I need to put, pull together this report, a variety of different things that at some point might get done, but it’s just not necessarily top of the priority list right now. And I work with micro interns myself regularly and delegate these short term tasks to students. I mean, they’re not dealing with proprietary information or anything confidential, PPI or anything along those lines, but rather able to usually get you 90, if not a hundred percent of the way there towards finishing that, that project, and I can then delegate my time towards something else.

Peter (06:33):

And those are mostly done remotely or those are mostly done in person or, or how?

Kristen (06:39):

Yeah, good question. So we see that even before Covid and Parker, Dewey’s been around for seven years, so we’ve been certainly predates the, the pandemic quite a bit. But well over 90% have always been done remotely. Not only does that make it easier so that organizations can have access to and work with students regardless of where they physically might be located, but it also allows students the same opportunity and it’s also more accessible so that logistically companies don’t have to figure out where is the student going to sit, giving them building access or anything along those lines. Same thing with students. They don’t have to worry about transportation issues, et cetera. So it makes it easier for everybody.

Steven (07:20):

Very cool. You know, I, I’ve, as you probably know, I’ve interacted a fair amount with, with the founder Jeff, Jeff Moss through the NACE forums, the National Association of College Employers. They pub publish of a variety of digests and stuff like that. And one of the things, one of the many things that he and I strongly advocate for is for interns to be paid. And maybe you can help the listeners to this podcast understand why it’s so important for employers to to pay their interns.

Peter (07:59):

And let me interrupt for one second and just say, a lot of our audience is international in scope. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and the structures may be different overseas, wherever they may be. At the same time, like you and like your companies, I believe people should get paid for the work they do.

Kristen (08:22):

Yeah. I mean, not only is it something where you, it’s the right thing to do. We all work, we all, you know, receive compensation for the, the work that we’re doing. So just from, you know, it’s, it’s the right business sense to to do that. But you know, students have bills to pay expenses, they’re paying college tuition, et cetera. And so it certainly makes it so that the opportunity is, is accessible to them. But even more than that, and I know Steven, our, our joint organizations, our missions are to try to create more, more equitable access to, to opportunities. And so there are so many different models and recruitment strategies that are out there where students are being asked to do lots of different things and not be paid for it. Whether it be an extensive interview process, whether it be to do various project simulations, et cetera, that take hours to, to complete in order to get shortlisted for opportunities. You know, these are things that while they might be great experiences, might be great ways to connect companies and students, they’re not available and accessible to students who can’t afford to do unpaid work. And so that’s why from the get go, all opportunities that we define as micro internships must be paid and paid fairly. And that is our number one vet criteria when we’re looking at opportunities on the platform.

Steven (09:41):

So you find that when an employer pays their interns and pays them fairly, whatever that might be for a particular kind of work that, that sounds like that leads to a better quality intern? Absolutely. The work is better. And then ultimately I would think the goal of that micro internship like it is with most internships is to then convert that person from essentially a temporary to a permanent employee. And so you’re gonna end up with a better quality hire.

Kristen (10:13):

Exactly. And you know, it’s an interesting point about the goal of the micro internship because we find that the goals are, are quite varied, as varied as the types of projects themselves because we see these more organizations using them as more of a top of funnel recruiting strategy so that they’re identifying way students who might be a good fit for some of their longer term commitments. We had an early micro intern equate the concept to dating where he said, you know, if a micro internship, you can do lots and lots of different projects all throughout your college career so that you can make a more informed decision when it comes to those longer term opportunities and have to then make commitments to internships or full-time roles which the student equated it to, like getting engaged. Is the internship or getting married is that full-time role? Just the opportunity cost of making a bad decision becomes a lot higher the longer the opportunity is. And so students are doing micro internships as early, early as their freshman year, even until after they’ve graduated. And so it’s just gives them more data to be able to make that more informed decision of what’s the right fit for them.

Speaker 5 (11:20):

We’ll

Steven (11:21):

Be back right after this break.

Speaker 5 (11:32):

Welcome

Steven (11:33):

Back to the inside job boards and Recruitment marketplaces podcast.

Peter (11:38):

So when I saw Parker Dewey for some reason or other, I thought it sounds a lot like Thunder Mifflin. Just another one of those names. And then you said the founder isn’t named Parker or Dewey, which even is confusing me even more. There’s gotta be a revenue model here somewhere. What is it?

Kristen (11:57):

Well, lemme dig into the the name just a moment as well. So it comes from Francis Parker and John Dewey and those of you who, like myself went to grad school to study higher education, they probably, those names ring a bell as they were the two row founders towards the whole idea of learning by doing. Cause that’s essentially what a micro internship is and a key differentiator between this and, and other gig work, if you will. I mean, it’s essentially what we’re talking about here, but putting it into a, an educational setting because these students who are pursuing these are also doing it in conjunction with, you know, whatever they’re studying academically in, in a post-secondary situation in in most cases. And so that’s, that’s why the name and you know, the revenue model, it’s, it’s determined by the organizations who are posting the projects.

(12:47):

Our platform from a a company standpoint, it’s, it’s a marketplace for these, you know, early career professionals and companies to be able to connect through these short term projects. And, you know, the organization posts the project, 90% of that particular dollar value goes to the student or students that they select. The 10% that Parker Dewey retains covers our costs, most of which is consumed by administering the different opportunities. So when the students are completing the projects, they’re not working for the companies that they’re doing the projects for, but rather for Parker Dewey, we’re handling all the administration, all of the hr, legal, et cetera, we assume that burden making it a whole lot easier for these organizations to be able to offer these opportunities in the first place.

Steven (13:31):

So it sounds like it’s kind of a staffing company model at at, at the end of the day, right? The employers pay you x you pay a portion of that. I think probably the lion’s share over to the student is that

Kristen (13:44):

To some extent with one key differentiator is that we don’t want students to be on our platform forever. We don’t want them to be microinsurance. So as a way to help facilitate the hiring of the student, which is ultimately our goal. So we don’t charge any sort of temp to perm conversion or any sort of costs if the company does want to hire the student for internship, full-time role or anything else. So that’s ultimately that that’s what they’d like.

Steven (14:10):

Yeah, the expectation of all involved that the student, the employer Parker Dewey the school, if, if, if there’s one involved in, in is, is that hopefully this particular micro internship turns into something bigger and then to, to start to add fees into that, just it inhibits that, it, it, it creates a barrier to to that happening. So question for you around, we’ve been talking about students, one of the things that I’ve seen that’s really changed in the world of employment in the early career section of, or segment of the employment market is that I’m seeing, seeing more and more employers being more and more willing to offer internships or positions like them to non students. People who maybe graduated from high school but didn’t go to college or they did go to college, they didn’t complete, or they went into the military for four years or something along those lines. So for those non-students, is there can, can they find micro internships through Parker Dewey or do you exclusively work with, with currently enrolled students? Yeah,

Kristen (15:26):

That’s a good question. And we deliberately use the phrase on our website elsewhere, career launcher to be a, a kinda a big umbrella. So most are going to be affiliated with some sort of higher education institution, whether that be, you know, pursuing some sort of degree or have just completed a degree. We don’t kick folks off the platform after their x amount of time from graduation or anything like that because, you know, we recognize that it can take folks varying amounts of time to be able to launch their career. But yeah, we work with non-profit organizations for even for-profit organizations that are offering various types of training co-curricular training, et cetera. Also under our umbrella, our organizations like Chambers of Commerce who are very focused on regional economic development and trying to retain talent that is educated nearby, whether that be K-12 or or beyond and trying to keep that talent close by.

(16:26):

And that’s a, a, a nationwide challenge from, from what we see. So various use cases for how, you know, these organizations are, are coming and how, how folks are, are wanting to facilitate these, these relationships. But we’re seeing that these short term projects for this early career professional early career might be somebody who’s 40 years old, changing careers as well. But somebody who just is looking for that entry level experience. Just basically to answer that question that we’ve all seen, I’m sure you talk about regularly is you know, you have to have for an entry level job, x amount of years of experience. How do you get that? This is one way to to help answer that

Peter (17:06):

Question. The interesting thing, when I went to India, and I’ve worked with a few companies and clients there, the word in India for people who are career launchers, career starters, whatever, is freshers because they’re fresh out of high school, fresh out of college, fresh out of university, they don’t use the term college. So they’re freshers and they are a number of job boards in India for freshers. The first time I saw that word I went, huh, but it makes sense. So you can say that you’re working with Freshers you work with university and college career service offices. Are they gonna be around in 10 years? And if so, how, why? What do you bring to them? What do they bring to you?

Kristen (18:01):

Yeah, it’s a good question. And usually our relationships are with the university career services, but not always. In some cases it’s driven by an academic department. Sometimes the relationship’s driven by some sort of other student affairs department, whether maybe it’s like the multicultural center or even alumni affairs, et cetera. Will they be around in 10 years? Yeah, I I I think so. And as somebody who’s spent over a decade in career services, I, I hope so, because I think there is certainly a lot of value that they’re bringing to the higher education space, if nothing else to keep. What are you there for and what are you gonna do after you graduate on everybody’s radar? Is it gonna change? Absolutely. I mean, in the decade that I’ve been in this space, Steven, I know you can certainly attest there’s been radical change. I think Covid in particular is a turning point specifically for higher education where nothing is going to ever be the same, I think in higher education, pre covid versus post. And so it’s, you know, a changing marketplace where the willingness for companies and students to try to connect via different models is certainly something that, that we’re seeing right now. And so school’s receptiveness to short term project based work is, is certainly evolving, but, but something that, that we’ve seen grow extensively over the past three or so years.

Peter (19:26):

And you work from home? I work from home. Steven, well, aside from the fact that it’s questionable whether he works, but when he does work, he works from anywhere. He works from Europe, he works from Germany, he works from his RV in New Mexico or wherever

Steven (19:44):

The, I have an rv,

Peter (19:47):

Wherever, wherever he has, am I,

Steven (19:49):

Am I paying insurance and fuel for this RV that I don’t know anything about

Peter (19:54):

<Laugh>, ah, me. But in any case clearly things have changed radically. Do you think this micro internship model will become an increasingly valuable way for people to find new jobs, move into new careers?

Kristen (20:13):

I think so. I mean, we were already seeing it with the gig economy where as a way to earn in a living wage. Individuals are stacking on top of their full-time job, extra gig work. The percentage is over 50% of folks have at least some sort of gig work in addition to a full time job. And so bringing that into the early career space is certainly where we’re seeing more of an evolution and having schools be open to promoting this as a viable way for them to build their resume, that is something we are, are certainly seeing quite a bit of. And seeing that it’s, that they’re supportive, not that it’s going to interfere with what’s going on in the classroom, but rather that it’s augmenting and bringing it just to life so much more. I mean, that’s the whole idea of experiential education. But we’re also, I mean, the reason I think this is to stick around is you look at how credentialing in general is starting to shrink. There’s things like badging and certifications and so on. The whole idea of how can you condensely package education. This is a way that you can condensely package a way to prove that you have that education, that you have that skill in a way that that differentiates folks when it comes to their resume. They can show, yep, I’ve got these credentials now I also have that work experience to match.

Peter (21:31):

And so they can and are expected to list these micro internships on their resume or CV as the case may be.

Kristen (21:38):

Absolutely. And it’s just like they would an internship, it’s just instead of an experience taking several months, in this case, it’s probably taking several weeks or maybe even several days, but it’s all viable experience and in this case, relevant experience to what they wanna do long term to help them have some more talking points so that they can make that career pivot or they can just have more with their early enough in their career that they don’t have a lot professional experience to talk about. Well now they can. And so it becomes a way for them to then build upon and to gain additional experiences, you know, for whatever they wanna do, internships full time or, or whatever.

Steven (22:14):

Well, Kristin, thank you so much. The if, if I can just sort of add a comment at the end before we, before we close, one of the things that I love about Parker Dewey is that it, it gives everybody a chance. You know, almost all of us in our professional careers and our personal lives have at some point, maybe many times, said, you know, if somebody would just give me a chance, I can show them. And it works in both directions, right? It’s not just the student or the candidate that needs that opportunity to prove that they can do the work. Sometimes it’s also the employer needing to prove that they were a great place to start a career. And by offering a really, really low risk relationship, you know, a date is a lot lower risk than a marriage. A micro internship is a lot lower risk than a a permanent position with, with an employer as permanent as any position ever is. Then both sides have an opportunity in a very low risk manner to, to give each other a chance. For the job boards and recruitment marketplaces that are listening to this podcast or reading the transcript if they wanna learn more about Parker Dewey or about you personally, how should they do that?

Kristen (23:42):

Certainly happy to connect via our website parker dewey.com and I’m sure that will be in the, the transcription show notes. But also always happy to connect via LinkedIn or to, to continue the conversation. We’re pretty easily easy to find online, but you know, just really appreciate this opportunity. I’m a huge advocate, Steven, to your point around just trying to make opportunities more accessible, lower the stakes, just open the playing field a little bit more. That’s what we’ve seen since day one of this concept is that whether it be the, the company has never considered a student from that academic pedigree, or the student never would’ve considered that organization because of, you know, their industry or geography or, or whatever the case may be, this is a chance for both to realize that no, the fit is there and to do so in a meaningful way via these real world projects. So it’s, it’s an exciting time and appreciate this opportunity to, to share with them.

Steven (24:40):

Awesome. Thank you so much, Kristin.

Peter (24:44):

Inside job boards and recruitment marketplaces is a co-production of Evergreen Podcasts College recruiter and the AIM Group.

Steven (24:53):

Please subscribe for free on your favorite app, review it five stars are always nice, and recommend it to a couple of people you know who wanna learn more about job boards and recruitment marketplaces.

Peter (25:05):

Special thanks to our producer and engineer, Ian Douglas. I’m your host, Peter Oman of the AIM Group, the leading global consultancy in the field of marketplaces and classified advertising. Find out more about our reports on recruitment marketplaces, job boards and classifieds, including our new recruitment marketplaces annual at aim group.com/reports.

Steven (25:30):

I’m your host Steven Rothberg of job search site college recruiter. Each year we help more than 12 million candidates find great new jobs. Our customers are primarily Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, and other employers who hire at scale and advertise their jobs with us. You can reach me@stevencollegerecruiter.com.