Internship in US – 70.8 Percent of employers want to convert students into full-time, entry-level employees survey finds

Key findings

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

• Nearly all respondents to this survey had a formal internship program (92.0 percent). Less than half had a co-op program (45.1 percent).
• The primary focus of most employers’ internship and co-op programs is to convert students into full-time, entry-level employees (70.8 percent and 62.6 percent, respectively).
• Very few employers required their interns and co-ops to arrange to receive academic credit for program participation.

HIRING, CONVERSION, AND RETENTION

• Intern hiring decreased by 3.4 percent in 2014 and then remained unchanged in 2015.
• Co-op hiring growth is unchanged in 2015.
• In 2015, the intern conversion rate was 51.7 percent. The co-op conversion rate was 37.8 percent
• The Interns and co-ops most likely to be converted into full-time hires are those who have worked for a single employer on multiple occasions.
• Where an employee held his or her previous internship or co-op experience was influential in affecting five-year retention rates.

RECRUITING

• Employers begin planning for intern recruitment seven months before the position is scheduled to start. For co-ops, employers begin an average of six months in advance.
• In terms of both funding and effectiveness ratings, employers strongly favored career/job fairs and other on-campus recruiting activities to recruit interns and co-ops.
• Four target school selection criteria stand out as key factors: the geographic location of the school, the majors it offers, the perceived quality of its programs, and the employers’ past recruiting experience at that school.
• Overall, the most highly regarded skills for interns and co-ops are the ability to work in a team, the ability to obtain and process information, organizational and planning skills, verbal communication skills, and decision- making/problem-solving skills.

COMPENSATION

• The average hourly intern wage for bachelor’s degree-level interns in 2015 is $17.20.
• The highest salaries for bachelor’s degree-level interns were reported for computer science and engineering
majors, while the lowest were reported for education, liberal arts, and social science majors.
• The average hourly wage rate for co-ops at the bachelor’s level is $17.36.
• The highest paid bachelor’s degree co-ops were reported in the oil and gas extraction and chemical
(pharmaceutical) manufacturing industries.
• It was relatively uncommon for employers to provide employee benefits to either interns or co-ops (33.5 percent and 21.3 percent, respectively).