Do you want to hire in your small business but aren’t sure who? You may be ready to bring on someone but aren’t ready for a full-time employee? Your answer may be an intern! Learn when it may be smarter to hire an intern vs. employee.
Have you ever thought about hiring an intern for your small business? I believe most of us think that interns are only hired by medium to large size businesses and that is not true.
Creating an internship can be a great way to fill an open position that you may have, help you as a small business owner with your workload, or work on a special project for you and your business.
Typically an intern is hired for a short period of time and is not meant to replace an open employee position long term. Keep in mind that an intern is looking to gain exposure, knowledge, and experience in their field of interest.
When looking at your small business here are a few suggestions of where an intern might fit:
Social Media – a great opportunity for a marketing student, they can create content calendars, create posts, edit and schedule future posts and usually know the latest trends on the different platforms.
Communications – someone to write future blogs, emails, and marketing materials that you can utilize for the next 6-12 months. They can learn how to use email platforms like Mailchimp or Klaviyo
Event Planning – do you have an event coming up and you could use assistance in this area or create one for community marketing
Marketing Research – are you looking to expand your products or services an intern could create a full analysis to help you with your strategy
Videography – someone to create short videos, behind-the-scenes videos, and edit them for your marketing purposes
Finance – an intern could run some analytics of your business and or marketing efforts and create reports and metrics to help you better analyze going forward
Sales – bring someone on to do some prospecting and lead generation and networking on your behalf
Think about your business, where are the gaps, what you think is holding you back from the next level, or where you just need some extra help.
Remember Interns will need some hand-holding, make sure you have a clear onboarding process and they have support and are comfortable asking for help when needed. It is best to have expectations and desired deliverables outlined before they start and have checkpoints along the way with them. I recommend having a start date and an end date. 5-6 month internships are a great time frame as they will be around long enough to really add value and make it worth your time of hiring unless it is a seasonal need.
Now you know when it is best to hire an intern vs an employee! Still wondering if hiring an intern is right for you, I invite you to watch this short video where I share more details about how to get starting on finding an intern to help you grow your business.
If you want to have a better understanding of what is best for your business, schedule a free 30-minute call with me here!
