Hiring an intern?

[creativearc]

I know it's common for an internship to be unpaid, but my roommate in college worked for Motorola a couple summers and I think he earned around $4k a summer...

I'm interested in hiring an intern for the summer, and I have a personal contact that's very interested. I know for a fact his dad would prefer him to find a paid position as part of their agreement for his college education.

If that's the case, what's reasonable? $1,000/mo or so?

Paul

[pacres]

What kind of tasks would you have him doing? It seems a bit low, but if it's an under the talbe thing, it's probably a good deal. He gets some coin, and the experience is priceless.

[Lil_Red]

Some internships don't pay anything. Some pay a nominal amount and an internship should NEVER be paid under the table.

Before offering an internship position, you need to figure out:
- how many weeks the intern will work for you
- how many hours per week
- what the intern's responsibilities will be
- what the college's requirements are for the internship to be valid

Once you do all this, you can determine how much you will pay.

[vgarcia]

Like lil_red said, colleges ask a few things out of you the employer if you set this up as an official internship. If you just wanted some part-time help from a college kid that's a different story, and involves much less red tape.

[Hartmann]

There are a few different versions of internship. There is the paid internship that has no class credit, the paid credit internship where the intern is paid a smaller sum of money but given credit at his college, and then there is the purely credit type of internship. If you want to hire an intern for a purely credit internship then you will need to meet certain criteria of the school as well as criteria for a valid job in the student's field of study. Usually, these things are handled by the student but I would talk over the options with the potential interns and decided on the best option for both you and him/her.

[crislem]

I got an internship in the US in the summer of 2003. I worked in a theme park and I was paid $960/month+housing (it lasted for 4 months). You have to consider the fact that I came from Romania where the income is not as high as it is in the US.

I must add, it was a great experience for me .

[biggazillakilla]

Also, be careful about employers who are simply looking for some free labor for the summer. Some smaller firms may not have a good internship program set up and will end up using you for menial tasks until they can figure out how to use you. Some more unethical bosses may even try to profit off your labor by assigning you menial or tedious tasks that he or she would otherwise have to pay somebody to do.

If you have an idea of what you want to learn, present those ideas to your prospective employers. And ask what specifically you'd be expected to do so that you know whether it's a good way to spend your time.

[freekrai]

when I went to college 4 years ago, we had to take what a called a workterm which was 2 months working where ever they put us and that was generally non-paying.
I managed to luck out and have two companies fighting to actually hire me so I skipped the work term and went straight to the office.
Still regret the company I did go with but that is neither here nor there anymore.