Reference no: EM133339986
Assignment:
It's hard to believe a town of 14,082 people an hour's drive from Wichita, Kan., the nearest big city, would be a natural draw for aspiring young accountants.
But that's exactly what's happened in McPherson, Kan., thanks to an 85-employee public accounting firm's internship program. This year, the company has roughly one intern for every five employees.
Leaders at fast-growing Swindoll, Janzen, Hawk & Loyd (SJHL) are doubling down on internships as a way to grow their talent pipeline, cement relationships with local colleges, and boost the geographic and economic diversity of their staff. And so far, they have an impressive track record.
The company has attracted interns from Japan, Africa and Russia and has watched former interns soar in their post-graduation careers. But perhaps the greatest testament to the program's success is that some participants stay long enough to take on full-time leadership roles.
"Two of our current partners were interns for us," says Tamie Prieb, SHRM-CP, SJHL's marketing and HR manager.
Transitioning stellar interns into star employees is especially useful in today's tight hiring market. Many employers are struggling to find skilled labor, and while the rate of people quitting their jobs has slowed, it's still sky-high. In August 2022, 4.2 million people left their jobs, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. That compares to 3.5 million per month just prior to the pandemic.
In 2020, the public health crisis caused more than half of employers to cancel their internship programs, according to a survey by Glassdoor. Now, more than two years later, internships are making a comeback. When queried earlier this year, 200 large companies said they were planning to boost their intern hiring by an average of 22.6 percent in 2022, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers' (NACE's) 2022 Internship & Co-op Survey Report. Internships can be an especially important resource for smaller companies that feel the pinch of staff shortages even more acutely than larger organizations do.
Yet smaller businesses can face obstacles to attracting interns. After all, they don't have the huge marketing budgets of the bigger guys. They also might lack the bandwidth to run an internship program. But in most cases, it's worth trying to overcome these challenges to get a program going.
"Small businesses may be surprised that they can gain a great relationship, hire their next employee and change the trajectory of their business with interns," says Stefanie B. Lomax, SHRM-CP, president and CEO of strategy at HRPro4You in Laurel, Md. "It's a great way to grow."
As your company is a medium-sized firm, what are the suggestions you have on making the firm (and your internship program) more attractive to job seekers? Explain your suggestions in detail.