Deloitte’s summer program
Not all work experience undertaken by students in Australia is unpaid.
Accountancy firm Deloitte, for example, offers four- and eight-week paid placements over the summer holidays to university students. Traditionally the program mainly accepted commerce students, but it is becoming more diverse, accepting many technology students in recent years, says Deloitte’s national recruitment director, Tanyth Lloyd.
“From our perspective, the key focus for us is early identification of talent,” she says, noting that the race to secure such students is getting “more and more competitive”.
“Early identification used to mean the last year of university. Now it’s getting to mean the first year!
“It also provides us the opportunity to secure those talented students before they graduate. And it’s an effective way to predict their on-the-job success. In four to eight weeks, we can see whether they’d enjoy it, and whether they are suited to a client-facing or more technical role.”
To best assess its interns, Deloitte gives them work similar to that they would be engaging in during a graduate role with the company. “We don’t scale it back in any way,” Lloyd says.
“It’s relatively low-risk for us to bring them in as summer vacationers. Even if we bring people in who aren’t as successful, who we don’t intend to offer graduate opportunities to, it’s worth the opportunity to assess that. It’s definitely worth our time investment.”
E-Web Marketing is open for business
Internships are common not only in large companies like Deloitte, but also across much of the mid-market.
Online marketer E-Web Marketing has had several interns. Matthew Forzan, a divisional director (SEO) at EWeb, says the company doesn’t have a structured, paid internship program, but rather is open to being approached by students who are interested in the company.
“The opportunity is always there,” he says. EWeb Marketing has a recruitment website, and runs regular ‘information days’ where people interested in the company can learn more about it (it has hired several people through these, and also gained a few interns). EWeb also regularly deals with universities – several of its staff are speaking to students at UNSW in September.
“It gives students a taste, or a foot in the door, about what we do and what online marketing is all about,” Forzan says.
“There are obvious benefits for us as far as getting people to do some work… but it also helps us build a relationship with that person. We have people do internships that we’ve then bought on full-time. It’s suited them and us.”
Interns can nominate a division of the business they would be interested in working with.
“Often universities don’t really teach too much online marketing, so we place them alongside people to learn how it works. They sometimes also work on logistics, or on the business side of things.”
“They do lots of different things,” Forzan says. “But not coffee runs.”
Myriam Robin is a journalist with LeadingCompany. You can follow her on Twitter at @myriamrobin This article first appeared on Leading Company.
Myriam Robin is a reporter for SmartCompany and its sister site LeadingCompany. She has degrees in economics, international studies and journalism. She likes writing about businesses taking risks and doing new things.
