And the hunt for a full-time job begins

THE sudden appearance of interns around the office is as sure a sign that summer has arrived as the sighting of the first cornflower. June marks the beginning of the season, when workplaces become briefly filled with new blooms eager to make an impression. For those hired from business schools, the typical placement will last around 10 weeks, before the call of lectures and a second year of study draws them back to college. 

Tough economic times had led to a dip in the number of interns that companies hired from MBA programmes. But appetite is on the rise again. Around half of business schools have reported an increase in the number of companies visiting campuses to recruit students for the summer holidays, according to the MBA Career Services Council, an industry body. Just 9% saw a decrease.

Before the crisis, it was the big financial-services firms that were the most voracious users of MBA students. Many had large formal programmes, sometimes taking in hundreds of students at a time. This is now less common. The crisis acted as a wild fire, says Michael Malone of the Kellogg School of Management near Chicago. Many prestigious firms were felled. But that has left the way clear for others who previously found it tough to compete for the best students. Consultancies, consumer product and tech companies, as well as boutique financial firms, have been particularly keen to fill the gap. 

This has helped to change the way that employers use interns. It used to be that managers dreaded having to dream up meaningless tasks to fill the placement’s time (although most appreciated the extra cups of tea). But they have now worked out how to get the best out of their short-term hires. Liberty Mutual, a large American insurer, brings in about 40 interns each year from business schools around the world. But rather than deciding on a fixed number, it first scours the company to find real-life business initiatives that need to be undertaken. It then recruits an intern for each opportunity. It often uses students for technical assignments for which, it assumes, business school will have prepared them, such as market sizing or competitor analysis.

Most students on a two-year MBA programme now look to find an internship for the end of the first year. This is because it is has become the most important route to a full-time job once they graduate. Anna Nowak, who runs Liberty Mutual’s recruitment programme, says it sees the time it spends with MBAs in the summer as an extended job interview. This means that students who once had the luxury of thinking about their post-MBA career sometime in the second year of their programme, are now having to make such decisions as early as their first term at school. 

How pushy is too pushy?

Interns are therefore understandably keen to impress prospective employers by showing a bit of initiative. Firms, in turn, like students who go above and beyond their assigned roles. Still, interns must walk a fine line. One financial services giant, with a turnover of $30 billion a year, tells of a fresh-faced intern, on his first morning at the firm, phoning the chief executive and demanding a meeting. Such chutzpah brought a smile to the boss’s lips, but predictably did not lead to an offer of a full-time job. Derek Walker, career services director of Oxford University’s Said Business School, says that an employer is really looking at just three things when it hires an intern: can he do the job; can he be trusted to work with our clients; and do we like working with him? Falling short on one of these criteria means that an intern is unlikely to be offered a full-time position. 

One perennially thorny issue is whether, and how much, an intern should be paid. Compared with students from other disciplines, it is rare for a summer hire from a business school to work for nothing. This is partly because they tend to be employed on useful assignments. But it is also because as much as students are keen to get a foot in the door of the best companies, there is also competition among companies to hire the best MBAs. Typically, therefore, students will be paid a percentage of an equivalent full-timer’s salary—perhaps 85%. Many find this a useful way of subsidising their eye-watering tuition fees, which can be more than $100,000 at the best schools. And it is certainly a better return on their investment than students’ traditional summer pursuits, such as waiting tables or going to the beach.