Dive Brief:
- More than 70% of organizations expect to maintain (47.7%) or increase (23.6%) intern hiring for 2024-2025, although large companies across industries plan to trim intern roles, causing overall intern hiring to fall by about 3%, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 2025 Internship & Co-op Report.
- 9 in 10 organizations say their intern hiring plans are driven by the needs of the organization, with 22% reporting that the state of the economy also factors in, the October 2024-January 2025 survey of 247 organizations found.
- In choosing an intern, the top priority for employers is a candidate with key skills critical to the role, respondents said. Previous internship experience with the company or in the industry is also important.
Dive Insight:
Studies have shown that internships mutually benefit students and employers. For students, internships — typically one-time work or service experiences related to their major or career goal — allow them to work in a professional setting under the supervision and monitoring of practicing professionals, the NACE report suggests.
For employers, a solid internship can serve as an important vehicle for talent scouting and branding, according to Glassdoor. The company’s best internships of 2025 list came out this week.
Bank of America, which celebrated its 20th year of offering summer internships last year, uses its internship program partly to meet its workforce needs, particularly as these needs have grown over the past 20 years, a BofA executive said.
Northrup Grumman’s internship program is another leading example. In 2023, early talent recruitment platform Yello named it number one on the platform’s list of top 100 internships for that year.
The program landed the top spot because of how it exposes interns to various parts of the business, maintains an openness to innovation, a hybrid program and staggered learning and development sessions to accommodate different school schedules, Yello said.
Employers favor hybrid programs, the NACE survey found. In a nod to Gen Z’s preference for blended in-person and remote work, about 3 in 5 employers who responded to the survey plan to provide a hybrid experience for their interns, NACE said.
On the other hand, employers widely use in-person fairs and on-campus recruiting to attract potential interns, according to the survey results. Notably, more than two-thirds of employers have found face-to-face interactions more effective than virtual recruiting, the survey found.
Employers also reported that offering relocation assistance can help draw in quality applicants. Nearly two-thirds said it yields a better applicant pool, in large part because it removes a barrier for students who otherwise would not relocate for an internship position, the report noted.
However, despite the positive reach, employers extended fewer offers of full-time employment to their 2023-2024 interns than in the past, NACE said. The average rate — 62% — was the lowest in more than five years, the organization noted.