Give interns real work, get real results: How high-impact internships build your future workforce

What I think companies should do to differentiate their internship programs is to have them present their final work to real leaders. Are you sick and tired of having your interns come out of the experience saying their biggest takeaway was getting coffee or filing documents? The thing is, the real excitement for top talent is not about luxurious perks but about unfettered C-suite exposure and real impact. The secret is to simply put one hour of your executive team’s time on the calendar to send to interns for their pitches.

This is a massive attraction because it jumps the intern from student to business owner in one swift movement. Instead of doing a passive project, they need to formulate a solution that has real financial implications. We at Desktronic find that when the interns know they are presenting to a director, like myself, their sense of responsibility increases immediately. 100% of our high-potential interns cite the opportunity to present their findings to leadership as the number one program benefit. They walk away with a direct, quantifiable success story that they helped to create, rather than a participation certificate. Putting them in the spotlight is the quickest, cheapest way to generate buzz and find the best talent next year.

In my opinion, the only way to design an internship program that genuinely stands out is to stop treating interns like “extra hands” and start treating them like junior creators. I really think it should be said that perks are forgettable, but ownership is unforgettable. The best tip I can give is this: build one signature project into the internship where the intern owns a real problem from start to finish, with a mentor beside them, not above them.

I once designed a program where every intern had to deliver a micro-innovation proposal tied to an actual business challenge. To be honest, I expected half-baked ideas, but one marketing intern completely restructured our social listening workflow, and her suggestion boosted engagement by 18 percent in the first month. What I believe is that this project became the program’s differentiator: interns felt like contributors, not tourists, and word of mouth alone doubled our applicant pool the next cycle.

We really have to see the bigger picture here: when interns feel trusted, challenged, and visible, they don’t just learn, they transform — and that’s what no competitor can easily replicate.

When internship programs actually give interns hands-on experience, that alone can distinguish them from competitors. It is still pretty common for “internships” to just be interns going around and getting coffee for everyone or doing basic office work. With these kinds of internships, you don’t actually learn much or take anything away from the experience. So, if you can instead create a program that actually provides consistent learning opportunities and hands-on experience, that goes a long way.

As part of the internship, we created a unique opportunity by assigning interns a project with regard to a legitimate company task rather than a false assignment. For example, we one time had an intern investigate the full flow of onboarding our new customers as well as suggest enhancements. It was a real issue, and one we had simply said we would get to later. We gave this intern access to our data, we allowed them to reach out and set up time to talk to our users, and we gave them the trust to present their final plan to the team. That feeling of real responsibility is what made this opportunity impactful.

We also employed a simple rhythm of having our intern meet with one mentor once a week and some sort of manager every week. The mid-week meetings provided a consistent rhythm for our intern, and they gave them insight into how teams communicate and make decisions. They gave them confidence to voice their ideas because they always knew in advance that their observations were important and added value, and did it in a way that did not take responsibility or authenticity away from our intern.

These types of opportunities do stand out, mostly because the intern always walks away with a finished project that impacted the organization. It is not about the perks. It is about giving the intern first-hand experience of what real ownership actually is, with the level of support they needed to make it all work for them and the team in a manner that gave them satisfaction without taking the work away.

The best way to design an internship program that truly stands out is to treat interns as contributors from day one, not observers. Perks don’t differentiate you. Ownership does. The most impactful programs I’ve seen (and built) give interns a real problem to solve that ties directly to the business, paired with the mentorship and context they need to succeed.

Create a “mini-mission” for each intern: something small enough to deliver in a few weeks, but meaningful enough that the business would feel the impact if it didn’t get done.

In our industry, that might be analyzing decline patterns for a specific merchant segment, mapping friction points in a dispute workflow, or building a simple insights report for a cross-border market. When interns own a mission with real consequences, three things happen: they learn faster, they feel trusted, and they produce work that actually moves the organization forward.

Programs like this stand out because they don’t just offer experience; they offer responsibility, which is the most powerful teacher.

Our organization provides interns with meaningful work responsibilities instead of assigning them unimportant tasks. The intern worked under senior developer supervision to refactor a legacy .NET Core API through Autofac and async/await best practices while taking full responsibility for the module. The experience of working on actual projects provides more value to interns than any company benefit. The organization should treat interns as future engineers who need development opportunities instead of viewing them as temporary visitors.

A strategy that has allowed me to create effective internship programs is to set up the internship around real ownership rather than simulated work. The impact of this type of experience is far more meaningful than assigning interns to do “intern work.” I actually plug them into a small, scoped problem that the company has identified as needing to be solved, with an actual deadline, an actual stakeholder, and an actual impact that can be measured. When interns think they are doing something that is a sandbox for their learning, they do not engage at the same level as when they know they are making a contribution to the business that the business will rely upon. They also will learn faster, initiate much more, and actually begin to act like full-time team members much faster than one would expect.

The second piece is the structured reflection piece that most organizations do not attend to. I have the interns keep a journal each week on the choices they made, the challenges they encountered, and the successes they achieved, after which I provide some light mentor check-ins about how they are thinking, not how they are performing. Therefore, one is able to create the internship as a development opportunity, not a judgment period. In my experience, the combination of real responsibility in their internship assignment as well as supporting reflection is the kind of internship that other organizations will find much more difficult to replicate through “perks,” because it provides individuals with something that is meaningful, specifically a sense that they learned and grew in their own ways, and in other ways that they will carry with them after the internship is over.

A standout internship program is one that’s intentionally designed to develop talent. It should follow a structured learning arc rather than a collection of workshops or low-value tasks. Have interns start with the fundamentals, gain context, and then deepen their skills each week through hands-on opportunities to directly apply what they’ve learned. As they grow, include them in the discussions that shape strategy and outcomes, welcoming their perspectives when appropriate. This not only accelerates their learning but also instills a tangible sense of responsibility and connection.

The program should culminate in a capstone project that demonstrates the growth and impact they’ve achieved over the course of the internship. When interns can clearly articulate what they contributed, how their thinking evolved, and the results of their work, you’ve created an experience that’s meaningful for them, as well as one that differentiates your organization.

I’ve started to think internships shouldn’t be onboarding programs. They should be launchpads.

Everyone can hand someone a checklist. What lingers is when someone gets an opportunity to ship something tangible.

Truthfully, I might even go as far as to recommend flipping the script, giving interns a task that no one else has bandwidth for… but that still needs to be done. You know. Hand them a wonky problem that’s been festering in some DM or on a backburner Trello card for six months and say, “Here’s what we know — go find out the rest.” It could be tracking down $5,000 in savings no one has counted or building a spreadsheet of 20 suppliers a pilot program never got around to. It doesn’t have to be sexy. Just unfinished. When someone claims ownership over something incomplete, their brain changes. They start to think like a builder, not a placeholder.

At least, that’s what I understand about how interns learn. I’d assume they learn the most when they’re dropped in the weeds and have support to make real contributions with brutal honesty and candor. I would guess that throwing someone a 2-week sprint with real and pressing stakes (even if it’s a relatively small one) would teach more than giving someone an extended round of shadowing a VP. To be fair, the goal isn’t speed. It’s confidence. Throw them something with a timebox, a deliverable, a why, and a way to care. In that case, the experience is no longer yours. It’s theirs.

To build a standout internship program for graduates, give them a purpose. Don’t just say you’re looking for someone to assist or shadow seniors. Give them ownership of a small but meaningful project.

Also, consider offering relocation support. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 2025 Internship & Co-op Report, nearly two-thirds of employers who provided relocation assistance reported a stronger applicant pool, while almost 9 out of 10 said it helped them stay competitive.

Every company can offer perks to interns, but if you really want to stand out from the sea of competitors, you need to focus on substance. Your focus should be on creating an internship program that is an experience and one that offers actual career enhancement.

One program that has really worked for us was moving our interns away from supporting roles and into owner roles. You make them the project lead/owner; we assign them a small project that we would have undertaken ourselves, but we make it their primary focus and responsibility. The key is that the project must have a measurable impact on your business. We also pair them with a senior leader to act as a mentor and a guiding hand.

This directly shifts them from sitting behind a computer the entire day, capturing data, to a capable employee who needs to attend meetings, manage a timeline, and present the outcome to the top brass. It gives them actual work experience instead of a quick peek behind the scenes in a company.

When I was in college, there were two distinct groups of students with internships: those who just needed to tick that box off their resume, and others who really wanted to jump feet first into their field, hoping to earn valuable hands-on knowledge. There are employers who cater to each kind of internship candidate.

I was of the mindset that doing busy work was the worst. I’d hands down much rather be learning something. So, I’ve kept that in mind when structuring our internship programs.

As a business, you have to ask yourself what your end goal is. Do you want extra hands around the office to help with busy work, or is your goal to help build your pipeline for future job candidates?

There are a lot of things you can do to make your internship meaningful for interns. Pairing them up with a mentor is a good idea, as is making sure they understand their role and how they can best contribute to the company.

My top tip, though, is to expose interns to multiple facets of our business. This is especially important for those students who aren’t yet familiar with all of the possible career paths available to them in their chosen fields.

Doing this helps not only to provide a well-rounded experience for the student interns but also serves to build our brand recognition and foster a sense of loyalty that generates a solid pool of potential employees for the future.