Internship Impact and Innovation Amid Disruption

Summer internships play a critical role in developing organizations’ future talent pools and give college students an opportunity to showcase their skills. With COVID-19, we saw a significant impact on internship opportunities as companies had to quickly make decisions based on the daily changes occurring across the globe. Cartus' recent Pulse Survey, COVID-19 Impact on Internships, illustrates how respondents have changed their approach to internships for 2020.

In some cases, internship programs were completely canceled for this year. Other organizations needed to create innovative solutions to manage the unexpected and retain their internship program, as many recognized this is not only important to their organizations but to those students to whom they had made the commitment. In many cases, the decision was to “go virtual.” Key considerations as organizations manage through a virtual program, include:

• Providing a consistent global internship experience while keeping the interns safe
• Working in virtual teams
• Coaching and mentoring the interns
• Providing networking opportunities among the interns
• Evaluation of the intern for future opportunities

However, the long-term impact on evaluating future talent pools is still to be determined as each organization manages through the unknown waters of a virtual internship program. Read our new Pulse Survey, COVID-19 Impact on Internships, for more information.

And in case you missed, don't forget to check out the recording of our recent Global Mobility Insights webinar, Internship Impact and Innovation amid Disruption, to hear from our panel of industry experts representing Microsoft, Qualcomm, and National Corp Housing.

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