Insight
Startups can outcompete tech giants for interns without matching their pay
“No matter what company you're at, whether it's large or small, you are able to compete with some of the biggest companies in the world for interns and for talent in general. And it doesn't have to be That you have to pay the intern more.”
Disclosure
Managers should encourage top interns to finish other internships before accepting offers
“I encourage people who I thought did a great job at my company, and I would give them a full-time offer to still finish their internships at other companies, because you want to make sure that you are getting that experience and you figure out, oh yeah, this r…”
Insight
Job interviews are notoriously poor predictors of actual candidate performance
“Interviews are not that good at predictor performance.
Actually, it's on the slide.
and it's really just a way for you to figure out if somebody might be a fit for you.
And so the shorter you can make that process, like I wouldn't recommend hours or hours lon…”
Insight
Early-stage startups can successfully scale with a one-to-one intern-to-engineer ratio
“So in startups, I like to think of like one-to-one when I was at extreme labs, like by the end there, I put in, you know, we have our ending stat there. We had about 65 interns out of 350 employees, but when we were growing, we had one intern to one engineer.”
Insight
Robust internship programs make hiring experienced full-time employees significantly easier
“The other thing I found interesting is whenever I've had a really robust internship program, I find that it's easier to hire full times. And I think that's a combination of things, whether it's greater, a better sense of how to onboard, or even thinking throug…”
Insight
Interns should have the exact same standing and access as full-time employees
“You have to think of them as your full times, and if you think of them as your full times, you should be taking their suggestions and feedback. You should be unblocking them. They should have the same level of access as everybody else.”
Insight
Offering pair programming makes hiring tech interns significantly easier for startups
“We always had an easy easy opportunity to hire interns because interns always wanted a pair program because it's a great mentorship opportunity.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Farhan Thawar once hired seven engineers on the spot at a fair
“I famously hired seven engineers at a career fair, like hired them, like not, didn't, like, just get their resumes or give them a t-shirt, actually hired them at the career fair, and so I think that there are amazing ways to reduce the friction to talking to p…”
Insight
Raffling prizes for resumes at info sessions rapidly drives intern applicant volume
“An easy way to get people to apply is have prizes, right? You could say, I would just say, oh, I'm giving out an Xbox, and here's I'm gonna pick a resume out of this pile, and literally I would just, you know, people would go, people would leave the seminar, p…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Successful internship programs convert 70% to 80% of graduating interns to full-time
“I think in most companies I've seen like 70 to 80% conversion here in terms of like giving them an offer and then coming back.”
Insight
Companies should apply identical confidentiality standards to interns and full-time employees
“I think that you have to really treat interns, contractors, full-times with the same level of confidentiality as anything else in your business, which probably means just explaining it, right?”
Insight
Emailing university professors for top student recommendations is an underutilized recruiting tactic
“Don't forget that professors know also what the best, like who the best students are. And so you're hitting on like a really good, like secret, meaning like not many people do this, but I've been doing it like my whole career, like email professors, Get, get t…”
Disclosure
Companies should skip standard interviews for returning interns seeking full-time roles
“When somebody who used to work for me or a previous intern wants to come back for a full-time job, we don't put them in the interview process, right? Cause Unless you really just got to figure out one dimension of them, like you might want to figure out, oh, t…”
Assertion Supported
University of Waterloo engineering intern pay scales up to $60 per hour
“I just went to the University of Waterloo website yesterday for this slide and said intern salaries. And they have it. So if you're ever wondering, like, how much should I pay my intern, right? Like this is a good frame of reference. And you can see the variab…”
Assertion Supported
Shopify's Dev Degree pays university tuition while students complete their internships
“Shopify has a, has an interesting program called dev degree. And what dev degree is, it's a program in conjunction with a few schools whereby you get your university paid for and you do your internships all at Shopify.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fewer than 3% of interns create confidentiality issues requiring company intervention
“I would say less than three percent of the people who you probably have to have an issue, and you have to probably just talk to those people.”
