Advice for Employers and Recruiters
How inclusive internship recruiting can raise, not lower, performance
Many companies feel pulled between wanting more diverse internship cohorts and wanting to maintain strong performance standards, but the two goals are not at odds. In fact, the organizations that do this well recognize that broader talent pools often reveal candidates who bring fresh perspectives, strong motivation, and real potential. The key is to stop thinking in terms of tradeoffs and start thinking in terms of opportunity. When employers open the door wider and pair that with thoughtful selection and support, they build programs that are both more inclusive and more effective.
This article brings together insights from industry experts who have figured out how to strike that balance in a way that strengthens their early talent pipelines. We will look at how smarter screening methods, clearer expectations, and structured support systems help organizations reach more candidates without lowering the bar. The result is a stronger internship program that delivers on both goals: expanding access and delivering high performance.
- Create Tiered Tracks for Different Talent Types
- Build Your Own Assets Through Broader Access
- Cast Wide Nets to Capture Hidden Talent
- Widen Funnels While Filtering for True Potential
- Seek Fresh Perspectives to Unlock Novel Problems
- Widen Doors and Raise Mentorship Support
- Recruit Broadly but Screen for Actual Ability
- Focus on Portfolios Over Academic Credentials
- Filter by Curiosity Then Invest Deeply
- Screen for Qualities That Consistently Predict Growth
- Implement Dual Approach With Mentorship Programs
- Select for Narrative Instinct and Clear Thinking
- Be Strategically Inclusive With Performance Assessments
- Offer Trial Periods to Assess Real Work
- Build Tiered Structures for Budget and Diversity
- Design Experiences Where Performance Grows Together
- Develop Potential Rather Than Filter Prematurely
- Hire for Mindset and Train Technical Skills
Create Tiered Tracks for Different Talent Types
In my opinion, the right balance lies in treating internships like a dual investment: part talent pipeline, part capability experiment. I really think it should be said that if you only target high-performing students, you’ll get short-term output, but you’ll never diversify your future bench. And if you open the doors too broadly without structure, you’ll overwhelm your managers and dilute the experience.
To be honest, the model that worked best for me was a tiered internship track — one designed for high-potential students who could jump straight into complex projects, and another designed for emerging talent who needed more guided learning. I once brought in a student who barely scraped through the interview but showed extraordinary curiosity, and within six weeks, she outperformed two of the “top-ranked” interns simply because she was coachable. What I believe is that this reminded me that capability isn’t always visible upfront.
We really have to see the bigger picture here. ROI isn’t just productivity; it’s future leaders, fresh perspectives, and long-term diversity. When you design the program to support both types of interns, you get performance and pipeline — without sacrificing either.
Build Your Own Assets Through Broader Access
I would say the obsession with GPA or targeting only “top schools” makes no financial sense if your actual goal is ROI. We brought on a community college intern once who ended up saving our firm $23,000 in data entry and vendor management work over six months — and that person was hired full-time later at a lower salary than the Ivy League intern who flamed out in three weeks. Companies that cast wider nets tap into overlooked talent that is hungry, loyal, and more likely to take ownership because no one else gave them a shot. I want that person on my team, not the polished resume with zero real grind behind it.
If the internship is just a vanity pipeline, fine, chase the “high-performers” and brag about the school names. But if it is about results, the better ROI comes from building your own talent through broader access. In our case, that means opening applications to tech bootcamps, community programs, and trade school grads — then paying them $18/hour and training them to be $60/hour assets within one year. We track outcomes, and those who started “off target” are 2x more likely to stay past 18 months.
Cast Wide Nets to Capture Hidden Talent
Recruitment efforts must always cast the net wide, diversifying the pipeline and generating the largest applicant pool possible.
Candidate potential follows the typical bell curve distribution, with few at the extremes and most people in the middle. Let’s say that 10 percent of applicants are high potential; having 10,000 applicants guarantees 1,000 high potentials.
Now instead, imagine you only target prestigious universities. Instead, 20 percent are high potentials, twice as many as the previous group. But you now only have 1,000 applicants. That means 200 high potentials instead of 1,000.
High academic achievers with impressive extracurriculars from prestigious universities are more likely to have high potential, but it’s by no means a guarantee. Instead, casting the net wide improves chances of actually finding high potential applicants, especially those diamonds in the rough.
Naturally, this approach requires effective screening. Relying solely on resume sifting simply isn’t going to cut it. But if you have the tools to identify high potential candidates, there is no reason to artificially limit the size of your applicant pool.
Widen Funnels While Filtering for True Potential
When I started building my company, I underestimated how complex internship programs could be. In the beginning, I leaned heavily toward recruiting only high-performing students from well-known programs. It felt safer — faster onboarding, fewer mistakes, and cleaner output. But the longer I worked with early-stage talent, the more I realized that potential rarely fits neatly into a GPA or a university name.
The turning point came a few years ago when we brought in two interns from completely different backgrounds. One was a top student from a competitive tech school. The other came from a small community college and found our posting through a Facebook group. If you looked at their resumes side by side, you’d assume the high-performer would outpace the other in every metric.
But the opposite happened. The student from the community college had an instinct for problem-solving that you simply can’t measure on paper. He asked better questions, experimented freely, and even identified a workflow inefficiency our senior team had overlooked. That moment made me rethink how we evaluate early talent and what “ROI” really means at this stage.
Since then, I’ve shifted toward what I call “structured openness.” We open opportunities broadly, but we build assessments that reveal curiosity, resilience, and creative thinking — traits I’ve found far more predictive of long-term performance than academic pedigree. It might be a simple prompt like asking candidates to break down a recent tool they learned on their own, or to reflect on a time they solved a problem outside a classroom.
The balance, at least in my experience, comes from widening the top of the funnel while being intentional about how you filter for potential. You can diversify the pipeline without lowering standards. In fact, broadening access often surfaces talent that would never appear through traditional targeting.
And the ROI? It shows up in ways that matter: new perspectives, scrappier work ethic, and a team that reflects the real diversity of the customers we build for.
Seek Fresh Perspectives to Unlock Novel Problems
Every leader feels this tension. You have pressure for immediate results, but you also need to build a resilient, innovative team for the long haul.
Targeting only a narrow slice of “high-performing” students feels efficient. Their resumes are easy to parse, their backgrounds are familiar, and it seems like the quickest path to a return on investment.
But this approach mistakes a strong academic signal for a guarantee of real-world performance. It really just optimizes for a future that looks exactly like the past. In a field like AI that reinvents itself every few years, that’s a dangerous bet to make.
The real value of an internship program isn’t the single project an intern completes. It’s the injection of new questions, unforeseen skills, and novel perspectives into your full-time team.
What’s more, the very definition of “high-performing” depends entirely on the context. The student who excels at well-defined coursework may not be the one who thrives in the ambiguity of a genuine research problem.
When you open up your hiring pool, you are doing more than just serving a diversity goal. You are running a search for people who think differently. You’re looking for the person who sees the world through a different lens, the key to unlocking problems your current team doesn’t even know how to frame yet.
I remember an intern we hired from a state university with a background in computational linguistics, not pure computer science. The team, full of top-tier ML PhDs, was stuck on a model that kept fixating on the wrong patterns in our text data.
She didn’t have the same deep learning credentials, but she had a much richer intuition for language. In a meeting, she quietly pointed out that our data cleaning process was erasing the very grammatical clues the model needed.
It was an insight born from a different discipline, one that our specialized experts had completely missed. We learned then that the highest return often comes from the perspective you didn’t know you were missing.
Widen Doors and Raise Mentorship Support
I’m totally in support of widening the door as long as you raise the support. Opening internships broadly gives opportunities to people who may not have gotten them if you had used more degree-focused channels. Some of our best recruits didn’t have impressive degrees or come from top schools. We just made sure they showed curiosity and a willingness to learn. But for this model to work, you have to give room to learn in the form of mentoring.
We usually start wide, then use skills exercises to spot those with potential. And once they’re in the door, our investment in coaching helps them grow. There’s also the fact that people are more likely to be loyal when you bet on them when others didn’t.
Recruit Broadly but Screen for Actual Ability
You don’t have to choose between diversity and performance. The smart move is to recruit broadly but use fair screening methods to identify high performers from that wider pool. I post opportunities everywhere, not just at top-tier schools, because talent exists in places most companies ignore. Then I use skills-based assessments and structured interviews to find the people who can actually deliver, regardless of where they went to school.
Some of my best interns came from schools nobody’s heard of, but they had the drive and problem-solving skills that matter way more than a fancy degree. The key is making your process accessible to everyone, then being rigorous about evaluating actual ability. Also, pay your interns. Unpaid internships automatically cut out talented people who can’t afford to work for free, which kills both diversity and your chances of finding hidden gems.
Focus on Portfolios Over Academic Credentials
Access to talent and ROI can be balanced by focusing on candidates’ portfolios and demonstrated skills as opposed to their academic credentials. The initial recruitment approach should emphasize getting as many diverse and creative perspectives through the access pipeline. The subsequent filtering should focus only on those candidates who can demonstrate they have successfully completed functional tasks and display high digital literacy, irrespective of their institution; consequently, it is only those candidates who possess raw executable talent that will drive innovation and high ROI.
Filter by Curiosity Then Invest Deeply
We’ve learned that the right balance is not choosing between “open to all” and “only top performers,” but building a two-layer internship system that does both intelligently.
Opening applications widely helps us diversify the talent pipeline. SEO benefits from different thinking styles, backgrounds, and perspectives. But instead of filtering students only by academic performance, we filter by curiosity, consistency, and willingness to learn, because these traits predict long-term success far better than grades.
From there, we identify high-performing interns through real tasks, not resumes — small assignments, research sprints, and problem-solving tests. This lets us invest deeper only in the interns who show initiative and deliver real value. The result is a fair and inclusive process on the front end, but high-ROI mentorship on the back end. In my experience, when you select based on potential and then double down on the ones who prove themselves, you get the best blend of diversity, performance, and long-term talent growth.
Screen for Qualities That Consistently Predict Growth
The sweet spot sits in the space where “potential meets access.” A broad opening invites voices and backgrounds that don’t usually get a seat at the table, which strengthens the long-term talent pipeline.
From there, the real differentiation comes from screening for qualities that consistently predict growth: curiosity that pushes them to ask better questions, grit that shows they can stay in the game when things get tough, and initiative that signals they’ll run with opportunities rather than wait for permission.
This gives you an internship cohort that reflects the real world while still delivering meaningful contributions. It’s not a tug-of-war between fairness and performance. It’s a way to invest in emerging talent that shows strong teams form when access is broad and selection centers on traits that help people rise fast once they’re in.
Implement Dual Approach With Mentorship Programs
The most effective method to achieve ROI success involves establishing specific targets for return on investment. The selection of students for short-term productivity improvement should focus on those who demonstrate exceptional skills and performance. The strategy of recruiting a diverse range of candidates leads to better long-term results because it helps develop new talent and improves inclusion practices.
We implemented a dual approach to internships through mentorship programs and skills-based work assignments. The program design enables candidates with non-traditional backgrounds to develop their skills while delivering meaningful work to the organization. Our previous interns who lacked traditional educational backgrounds delivered valuable contributions to our user experience and outreach efforts through their adaptability, empathetic nature, and insightful perspectives. Our organization views diverse talent as a key factor that generates financial returns.
Select for Narrative Instinct and Clear Thinking
Maintaining a balance between having wide access and focused recruitment protects the brand and expands the talent pipeline. Open applications demonstrate a clear message: that the company is accessible to everyone and interested in growing young talent or hiring outsiders with unusual thoughts. An intense program with open access but that selects for narrative instinct, clear thinking, curiosity, and the ability to synthesize ideas — not just academic credentials — produces interns who improve the work of everyone around them without narrowing the candidate pool.
For example, our team hired a student who did not have any formal background in communications, but she had a strong portfolio. While auditing our media channels, she pointed out tone discrepancies we had not recognized. Her keen insights positioned her for work on mission-critical product launch messaging, in which she worked alongside senior writers to hone the precision of our messaging. The business’s success was achieved not by their credentials and background but a process of selecting for pattern recognition, brand sensitivity, and communication maturity.
Be Strategically Inclusive With Performance Assessments
A good way to prove not being too ideological is to be strategically inclusive; casting a wide net to include perspectives, and simultaneously adding assessments — performance-based assessment upfront. Casting a broader net will in and of itself provide some evidence of included and inclusive practice and foster innovation; and strengthen the pipeline for the long haul. Assessors and consultants assessing candidates to inform clients using standardized sets of skill assessments or project assessments will provide evidence of the most likely contributors and quick successes. Ultimately the goal is to build diversity and a high-performing culture that combine and support, rather than counter, each other.
Offer Trial Periods to Assess Real Work
I’ve found that the best internship programs strike a balance between keeping opportunities open and setting high expectations. Law firms sometimes focus too heavily on academic background alone, but I’ve learned that some of the most capable interns come from less traditional paths. They may not have top school credentials, but they show intense curiosity, reliability, and a genuine commitment to the work.
At the same time, it’s essential to be practical. Our firm is busy, and we need interns who can learn quickly. That’s why we still focus on writing skills and communication. We don’t need perfection, but we do need someone who pays attention to detail and shows good judgment.
One thing that’s worked well for us is offering short trial periods. Instead of guessing from a resume, we give candidates a chance to do real work. That tells us more than any cover letter can. We’ve had great results with this approach. It gives students a fair shot, and it helps us find the ones who really fit.
For other small firms or businesses, I’d say you don’t have to choose between broad access and high standards. You need to invest a little more time up front. A thoughtful hiring process can open the door for the right people, no matter where they come from.
Build Tiered Structures for Budget and Diversity
For companies that are running a little tight on budget, it’s best to create a smaller, higher-performing intern team that consistently gives you a great ROI. Similarly, larger corporations can make better use of a tiered internship structure, where a small group of “team-lead interns” manages a broader intern team. This provides both diversity and good ROI. In short, depending on your budget, build a structure where your top interns drive outcomes or prioritize a tight, high-performing group to maximize return.
Design Experiences Where Performance Grows Together
The best internship programs don’t treat inclusion and performance as an either/or. Opening opportunities broadly brings in a wide range of perspectives and untapped potential, while structuring meaningful projects and mentorship ensures that all interns, regardless of background, can contribute at a high level. In this way, you maximize both inclusion and impact by designing experiences where potential and performance grow together.
Develop Potential Rather Than Filter Prematurely
An internship program is best employed at the moment when potential is viewed as something to develop rather than filtered prematurely. Firms which select only the best academicians reduce their talent pool and miss students who demonstrate potential when faced with real-life work. A broader point of entry, in most respects, introduces thinkers with different solutions, which makes teams even stronger than a transcript ever could. Clarity ensures there is consistency in the workload and the larger intake does not consume excessive time. More to the point, this strategy allows leaders to identify those who are responsible and those who can produce consistent results without speculation.
Meanwhile, targeted focus also serves a purpose, yet it has the greatest effect once interns have shown that they are capable of handling it. Actual employment provides characteristics that are not reflected in grades, and those indicators inform the selection of those who get more significant assignments. The reality is that this approach safeguards ROI since progression is brought about by consistency and curiosity. Firms gain interns who have earned their way up the ladder, developing a better recruiting pipeline.
Hire for Mindset and Train Technical Skills
The best results came when I hired interns based on mindset instead of grades. Opening opportunities too broadly slowed projects because skill levels were uneven, so targeting only top students made things too structured and limited creativity. The balance showed up when I picked people who were curious and adaptable, then trained them on the technical work. In marketing, curiosity often drives faster learning and better results than textbook knowledge.
The interns who liked testing ideas always stood out. They ran small experiments, tracked keyword patterns, and dug into why conversion rates changed, so they started contributing within weeks. The high-achieving students knew the theory, but some froze when things didn’t go as planned. The ones who stayed flexible, learned from outcomes, and kept improving had the biggest impact on campaigns.
Diversity works best when there’s support behind it. A mix of backgrounds brings new ways of thinking, but it helps to have clear systems for feedback and development. The balance is keeping hiring broad enough to bring in fresh ideas while putting time into tracking growth. I treat internship programs like any campaign because you set goals, test, adapt, and measure return. When curiosity meets accountability, both diversity and performance rise together.
