If you’re looking into starting your own internship program for your small business, you may have some questions about what an internship program is and what distinguishes it from other forms of employment. Internships are similar to apprenticeships in that the intern works in a temporary position with an emphasis on on-the-job training. Your typical intern is usually a college or university student, but they can also be high school students or post graduate adults seeking skills for a new career. Some of the benefits of an internship program are that they provide students with opportunities to gain experience in their field, determine if they have an interest in a particular career, create a network of contacts, or gain school credit. From a small business owner’s standpoint, internships provide the businesses with cheap or free labor for typically low level tasks. As an added bonus, many employers decide to hire back their interns after they graduate because they require little or no training.

Internships may be paid, unpaid, or partially paid. A partially paid internship could include a stipend, bonuses, or benefits. Typically, internships in the medical, architecture, engineering, law, business, technology, and advertising fields will be paid positions. This is because these students are in high demand and can demand competitive rates. Internships in non-profit organizations such as charities and think tanks are often unpaid, volunteer positions. For many schools, the act of job shadowing may also constitute as interning because the student is receiving professional experience.

Internships can be either part time or full time positions. Students will typically take part time internships during the school year so they can balance their work and academic lives. However, during the summer, most students search for full time internships. The length of an internship also varies depending on the school and time of the year. During the school year, an internship will normally last about 1 semester or trimester and over the summer and internship could last anywhere between 6-12 weeks.

An intern is generally your typical student, 18-22 years old, single, with no children. However, nontraditional students also desire internships and the diversity of backgrounds they bring is a definite plus for your small business. In a nutshell, an internship program formally integrates a student’s academic studies with relevant work experience. 

Many small business owners decide to outsource their work to off shorevirtual assistants or off shore workers. This can be a very effective strategy and to be honest, we also use off shorevirtual assistants in our business. However, there are 3 main problems that we have found with off shorevirtual assistants. Hiring interns instead of off shore virtual assistants solves all 3 of them.

                The first big problem that we find with off shorevirtual assistants is the time zone issue. Many of your off shore virtual assistants are going to be located in other countries like India, Pakistan, or the Philippines which means they are about 10-15 hours ahead of us in their time zone. This can make things very frustrating or challenging if you need to do things like a live chat or phone call. In both cases, someone needs to really adjust their schedule which can be very inconvenient especially if you are a busy small business owner.

                The second challenge that we encounter a lot when working with off shore virtual assistants is the language barrier. Many off shore virtual assistants actually speak very good English, but there are still problems in two big areas. The first area is when they need to interact with your customers. Sometimes customers will get frustrated when they know they are speaking to an off shore call center. The other big area is if they are doing writing for you. Many times, the technical way they were taught English doesn’t always translate over to normal written or spoken English in America.

                The third major challenge is that many of these emerging countries don’t always have the best internet reliability. The technology isn’t as advanced, so sometimes the internet can be down for multiple days in a row. In our business, we have had situations where a storm came in and we weren’t able to get in touch with our virtual assistant for 3-4 days.

                Interns are definitely different from off shorevirtual assistants because they are able to solve all of these problems. At most, the highest difference in time zones is going to be 3 hours from the east coast to the west coast, so you’re always going to be able to get in touch with each other. Interns are college educated students that speak really good English and can easily interact with your customers. Finally, the internet reliability in America is fantastic and if worst comes to worst they can always go down to their local coffee shop for free WiFi. In a nutshell, hiring interns over virtual assistants is the best way to help grow and expand your small business. 

Many small business owners may not be convinced that hiring interns would be able to help their business. These small business owners are missing out on an important resource because interns can literally do almost anything for a business. To get your mind focused on hiring interns, we made a short list of some of the different things interns can do for your small business:

·         Build a blog for your business: Interns can quickly set up a blog to help establish your brand and manage your customer relationships

·         Get your business set up on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube: If you are still resisting the ongoing trend for companies to leverage social media, then you are missing out on one of the most popular mediums to communicate with your customers.

·         Install analytics on your website: Interns can install analytics and review and analyze the data. We all know we should be testing our websites but it’s something that always gets put to the back of the list. Hiring an intern to analyze your sites can make a huge difference.

·         Automating, Documenting, or Streamlining an existing process in your business

·         Drive traffic to your website

·         Build a new lead generation website

·         Launch a new marketing campaign: Marketing interns love being able to create their own campaigns. Let the intern spend the time on creating the campaign and all you need to do is review it.

·         Research your competitors and look for new ways to gain market share

·         Recruit strategic partners

·         Read and implement some of the home study courses you never got around to completing

This is a short, non exhaustive list of just some of the things that an intern can do for your small business. The possibilities for growing and expanding your business are endless when it comes to hiring interns!

Are you currently a business owner in need of extra help with your daily business tasks? Would you like to receive this help without having to pay a dime? Well the experts at http://www.InternProfits.com can help you set up your very own internship program along with providing the knowledge needed to successfully manage it. After viewing this video you will gain a better understanding of the basics of what an internship is actually comprised of and the individuals you should be targeting.

http://www.internprofits.com is a website that shows business owners how they can get interns working for their company. This is the third video in a series that updates entrepreneurs and small business owners on the various tasks that an intern can do for them.

Mike the intern shares how he uses various article marketing techniques to promote the http://www.internprofits.com website. He explains how one of the most important aspects of article marketing is to provide the consumer with valuable and informative content. It is always best to do research before writing your article so that the readers will be able to learn from your article. Mike also shares how he uses an article spinning technique to make sure that people all over the internet can find his articles. The techniques that Mike uses can easily be implemented by interns in any business niche to reach out to your target customers. 

Check out http://www.internprofits.com to learn how you too can hire interns to promote your small business with article marketing. At InternProfits, we help entrepreneurs discover how businesses all across America are growing and expanding by having college interns work for them. Discover how your small business can reach an unlimited amount of customers over the internet through the power of interns. 

If you want to learn how you can quickly grow and expand your small business by utilizing the power of interns then head over to http://www.internprofits.com to learn more.


 

http://www.internprofits.com is a website that shows business owners how they can get interns working for their company. This is the second video in a series that updates entrepreneurs and small business owners on the various tasks that an intern can do for them.

 

Mike the intern shares how he was able to drive tons of highly targeted traffic to the http://www.internprofits.com website in just 2 days! He explains how he accomplished this feat by using some of the internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques that are included in the InternProfits product. The techniques that he uses can easily be implemented by interns in any business niche to reach out to your target customers.

 

Check out http://www.internprofits.com to learn how you too can hire interns to drive tons of highly targeted traffic to your small business website. At InternProfits, we help entrepreneurs discover how businesses all across America are growing and expanding by having college interns work for them. Discover how your small business can achieve these same results through the power of interns.

 

If you want to learn how you can quickly grow and expand your small business by utilizing the power of interns then head over to http://www.internprofits.com to learn more. 

When it comes to creating an internship program, there are so many misconceptions out there about what an intern actually does. If you think that an intern is supposed to be making coffee, picking up your dry cleaning, or making photo copies, then you are completely missing the boat. When it comes down to it, interns are some of the best and brightest young minds out there on the job market. Interns are known for injecting new ideas, passion, and energy into businesses that may be stuck in their ways. This is because they are still new and haven’t been sucked into the status quo way of doing things in the business world.

If you are using your interns to do menial tasks like making photo copies or filing, then you are leaving a major resource untapped. Think about it, interns can do almost anything that you can imagine. They are highly intelligent and used to adapting and learning new things on a continuous basis. Can you say college? All they require is a little guidance and training and you can put them to work on projects that you have never been able to finish. They can also help you develop and expand on your ideas from a fresh new point of view.

You have probably heard it a million times before, but the current generation of college students are internet experts! Today’s interns are so much more tech savvy than the older generations because they grew up with the internet. You will be absolutely amazed by the awesome ideas and new techniques that your interns can come up with using the internet.

So please, when you are creating your internship program, don’t make your interns do grunt work and menial tasks. Instead, give them projects of real value to work on that can directly benefit your business. All it takes is a little guidance and you will get something back phenomenal in return. 

                If you are a small business owner and you want to get an intern, then you are already on the right track to growing and expanding your business. Unlike larger, more established businesses, small business owners don’t have a human resources department that can help create an internship program. To further complicate the matter, most small business owners are so busy that they don’t think they have the time to manage an intern even if they got one.  Internships come in many different forms, but there are certain steps that everyone must take to ensure that the internship is a valuable experience for both the employer and the student. In this article, we are going to cover the legal issues surrounding internships, how to effectively structure the internship program, and some quick tips on how to mentor and manage an intern.

                Before you start hiring interns, you are going to want to seek the advice of your attorney to make sure the internship opportunity is in accordance with the Department of Labor’s (DOL) regulations. The DOL outlines the legal requirements for compensation that distinguishes between an intern and an employee. If you plan on hiring interns for paid positions, then you shouldn’t have too much to worry about with legal issues. However, if you plan on hiring interns for unpaid positions or offering to help them receive academic credit, then you need to be extremely careful when designing the internship. The debate about unpaid internships is currently a very hot topic, so you should always consult your legal representative before you create an internship program.

                Once the legal requirements are out of the way, you can create an internship program. One of the biggest things colleges look for when approving employers to offer internships is honesty in the job description. Many small business owners try to get an intern to help relieve them of some of their busy work, like filing or organizing mail. Most colleges will instantly deny a request like this because they want their students to get real world experience related to their major.  A good rule for employers to follow is to have the intern spend no less than 75% of their time working on real projects. If you don’t have a ton of work for the intern on a particular day, you can always let the intern sit in on meetings and conferences.  This may sound trivial to you, but it can be a major learning experience for the intern. Structuring your internship to be learning based will be mutually beneficial to both you and the intern. You get an intern to help you on your projects and an extra set of ears in case you miss anything from meetings. At the same time, the intern gets to work on real projects and gain professional experience.

                One of the top reasons that small business owners say they don’t hire interns is because they don’t think they have enough time to manage an intern. However, the amount of productivity that an intern can bring to a small business is worth the time to get an intern. By giving feedback and guiding the intern in the right direction, you can make sure that you are receiving high quality work. Many companies hire interns with the end goal that when they graduate they will be able to be promoted to a full time position. By being a good mentor, you can establish a professional relationship with the intern and understand their capabilities better than you ever could through an interview.