Advice on hiring interns
Hello everyone nice and kind on blind! I need some meaningful advice on hiring interns. Where to find them? How to attract them? Lessons learned? Context: we’re a startup, everyone is remote between Bay Area and India. I can offer them working out of my house if working remotely is an issue. Yours RockitMan
Waterloo Coops are great! Solid talent for 4 months at a time throughout the year
you will need to sponsor them for visas tho and most of them are non-canadian and will need h1b post graduation. Keep that in mind
Google Summer of Code is an excellent way to get interns involved on any open source projects you have. Alternatively, you'll want to visit campuses and do the careers fair thing. I wouldn't recommend going to Berkeley or Stanford, their students are overwhelmed by recruiting software companies. In fact, we had much better luck recruiting from the East Coast (relatively few startups or tech companies there compared to more old school businesses like finance). The more prestigious the university, the more expensive the cost of attending. I'd suggest picking interns with one or more past internships if possible. This'll mean less hand holding to get them adjusted to a professional environment. Given that everyone will be remote, this is even more important: it's very hard to mentor effectively remotely. I wouldn't try and compete on perks but sell the opportunity to build a significant part of the business and do meaningful work (unlike bigger companies where intern projects are often thrown away).
Oh, one more thing (relevant also for Waterloo): figure out timing. You'll need to start contacting universities now and be ready to start recruiting by mid August. Many of the most proactive students will have signed an offer by October, so speed is of importance. In particular, responding to applications and scheduling interviews.
What top universities would you recommend I reach out to?
Thanks that’s great advice yulp
1. College / boot camps 2. Pay them 3. You get out what you put in