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The essential purpose of internships is to provide university leavers with a meaningful experience that enhances their employability and skills

Matthias Ruziwa HR Issues

Graduate trainee programmes are an essential part of the career ladder in many professions. They are part and parcel of a modern, flexible economy and are useful both for the interns and for organisations.

Where once they were an informal means of gaining practical insight into a particular career, today they are a rung on the ladder to success. As a key training route for new graduates in the labour market, the writer of this article will attempt to share with you how internship programmes should be managed.

The essential purpose of internships is to provide university leavers with a meaningful experience that enhances their employability and skills. That said, there are clear business benefits to running a good internship scheme, such as gaining a new and motivated member of staff, bringing new skills and perspectives to your organisation and potentially improving productivity. It is therefore against this background that the following aspects be fulfilled to ensure that organisations produce future leaders who will drive the industry in line with the country`s economic blueprint, ZIM-ASSET.

1) Graduate trainees should be recruited in broadly the same way as regular employees of an organisation, with proper consideration given to how their skills and qualifications fit with the tasks they will be expected to fulfil. Recruitment should be conducted in an open and rigorous way to enable fair and equal access to available internships. Job advertisement for graduate trainees widens the talent pool available to your organisation and makes a real difference to the business. I therefore strongly recommend that instead of just taking on board family and friends like what some companies do, it is very useful for graduate trainees to have experience in the processes and demands that job applications require. Remember the idea is about the professional development of a young person.

2) Just like the job application process, interviews should be conducted in broadly the same way as when recruiting a regular employee.

That said, consideration should be given when devising interview questions to the fact that many of these young people may have limited industry experience which is presumably why they want to do graduate traineeship and much of the relevant experience they do have might be from their school and university education in addition to extracurricular activities.

I recommend that there be focusing on interview questions around employability skills, e.g. problem-solving skills, teamwork, communication, their potential for growth, their enthusiasm and commitment to the values of your organisation, rather than strict qualification and technical requirements.

In addition, if you intend to have your intern working on a particular project, the interview is a good opportunity for you to ask questions about how they would approach the project and what ideas they might have about it.

3) Whereas our labour laws are silent on minimum wages that must be paid to graduate trainees, it is my view that paying graduate trainees is not only the right thing to do, but it also helps to widen access to internships more generally and increase the pool of talent that employers can draw from.

Paying graduate trainees will also help you to increase the loyalty and motivation of the young people, which in turn helps improve the overall productivity of your business. Naturally, pay will boost morale and loyalty of these young people.

4) Because internships can be relatively short compared with a full-time position, it is essential that interns settle in as quickly as possible. A well-designed induction process can make an intern’s transition into the world of work a smooth and enjoyable experience as well as helping your organisation by integrating your new member of staff as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

From my experience the induction should contain issues like an introduction to the organisation, organisational structure, working relationships, a tour of the organisation`s facilities, health and safety information and a clear outline of job requirements.

5) The aim of hiring graduate trainees from an employer’s perspective is to get the best out of the graduates so that they make the biggest possible contribution to your company by using their skills and ideas.

If an internship is to be beneficial to both the employer and the intern, it is imperative that the intern is given as much responsibility and diversity in their work as possible. From your perspective, you want to make the most out of having an extra member of staff who, if given the right tasks, can improve your productivity and bring new ideas and perspectives into your organisation.

However, if you are in the habit of taking graduates on just to make tea and carry out your administrative tasks such as data entry then they are not going to be exposed to any opportunities for professional development. Remember, you could also be preventing them from being employed by someone that actually needs them and can offer them a workload more commensurate with their set of skills.

6) Organisations should ensure there is a dedicated person(s) who has ring-fenced time in their work schedule to supervise the graduate trainees and conduct regular performance reviews. This person should provide on-going feedback to the intern, be their advocate and mentor during the period of internship, and conduct a formal performance review to evaluate the success of their time with the organisation.

From my hands-on experience, good management and supervision will make the graduate trainee more productive and develop more quickly. As such, I strongly recommend that mentors are tasked with the following duties: building a supportive working relationship with the graduate trainees, acting as a point of contact for any concerns that the trainees might have and discussing career options and the intern’s plans for the future. The mentors must regularly give trainees performance feedback in order to achieve high levels of organisational performance.

7) Lastly, on completion of the graduate traineeship programme, organisations should provide graduate trainees with reference letters detailing the work they have undertaken, the skills and experience acquired, and the content of the formal performance review conducted at the end of the internship.

Trainees should also be offered the opportunity to give feedback on their experience in an exit interview, giving the organisation the opportunity to reflect on its own performance in delivering internships.

Our university graduates can be very useful in improving productivity at workplaces. In that regard, I would like to conclude by saying if organisations demonstrate commitment in training these young children into the real world of work within the time frames contained in internship agreements (normally one-two years), I am very confident that we will enjoy future talent who can drive industrialisation in Zimbabwe.

Matthias Ruziwa is an experienced and growing strategic human resource practitioner. He is also an independent arbitrator practising in the Midlands Province, City of Kwekwe. Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. You can contact Matthias at the following email address: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>/WhatsApp 0773 470 368