Is it worth it to have interns for your search?

by a searcher from Harvard University - Harvard Business School

5 years ago

I have heard conflicting advice in regards to having interns. Some people say they are a must while others complain that managing them can take up considerable amount of your time. 

I would love to hear people's opinion on the matter. Pro or against and why.

3 likes
106 views
2 comments

searcher from IE Business School

I love my interns, but its a hit and miss for me. I have had one exceptionally intern through the last year and a half. Out of 30+ I have worked with.

8 months ago | like reply | 0 likes

searcher from Harvard University - Harvard Business School

Highly in favor of having a team of interns to support the search. Interns are great additions to the search process because they are able to support with a lot of tasks that are impressionable for them but highly menial for you and are not worth you spending your time on. Having them will expand your bandwidth tremendously and allow you to spend your time on the tasks for which your time and effort are required 100%. Additionally, they also serve as great emotional support and a source of ideas/bouncing off ideas. With a good team your search operation should improve dramatically both in efficiency and effectiveness.

That said, you have to make sure to hire the right people with the right profile, as well as have a solid search process in place beforehand. Adding more people to the operation also adds admin complexity, so everything needs to run in an orderly fashion in order for the team to be effective. Nothing that different from hiring in any other organization/ operation.

5 years ago | like reply | 3 likes

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