Taking on an intern Pros and Cons

[CDP]

I'm looking to take on a software engineer or test engineer and friends have suggested internships. Does anybody have experience with interns? What are the pros and cons and is there any help available?

Thanks

[Gargamel]

Clinton - your thread has arrived

Sorry - couple of questions

Are you paying them ? even a token amount ?

Do you need a permanent person or is this a discrete start and stop project ?

[randlemarcus]

Surely if you are looking to employ someone, you need the work doing. An intern suggests an element of learning from you and your company - do you have the time or inclination?

[Simbu]

randlemarcus said:

Surely if you are looking to employ someone, you need the work doing. An intern suggests an element of learning from you and your company - do you have the time or inclination?

This - interns are often fairly high maintenance, especially in software engineering. They probably won't have any commercial experience and whatever they're being taught at uni is likely to be childplay compared to commercial expectations. You'll spend as much time teaching coding principles as you will helping them ramp up on 'domain knowledge'.

Generally speaking, the point of an internship is much like a year-long interview from the employer's perspective, along with getting a bit of simple work done. If they do a good job, then when they graduate you'll have a good potential developer looknig for work with you.

If you can accept the above, it's a great opportunity to connect with a uni and get access to a pool of talent. They might bring great, creative ideas to the company too.

[CDP]

Simbu said:

randlemarcus said:

Surely if you are looking to employ someone, you need the work doing. An intern suggests an element of learning from you and your company - do you have the time or inclination?

This - interns are often fairly high maintenance, especially in software engineering. They probably won't have any commercial experience and whatever they're being taught at uni is likely to be childplay compared to commercial expectations. You'll spend as much time teaching coding principles as you will helping them ramp up on 'domain knowledge'.

Generally speaking, the point of an internship is much like a year-long interview from the employer's perspective, along with getting a bit of simple work done. If they do a good job, then when they graduate you'll have a good potential developer looknig for work with you.

If you can accept the above, it's a great opportunity to connect with a uni and get access to a pool of talent. They might bring great, creative ideas to the company too.

Thanks, your concerns sound much the same as mine.