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Heh. I've worked on staff at IBM Extreme Blue for four years, and actually, our conversion rate is well above atrocious. (I'm guessing your undergrad years were a few years back, though, since you mention us & Microsoft but not our biggest rival for talent, Google).

In any case, though, you're right on the money in the bulk of what you're saying. Top-quality interns are highly aware of what they're doing, and what their goals are for a given internship. A prestigious internship should deliver on all of the following: exciting challenges, a high level of autonomy/entrepreneurship, a decent salary, and an impressive top line in the "experience" section of your resume.

From my perspective, here's what a company must do in order to attract top interns, and convert them to full-time hires:

* Be a great place to work (for interns and full-timers). Your interns will be with you for at least three months. They'll know within three days whether you treat your employees well.

* Give the interns real meaningful work to do, where they can clearly see the impact to the company's customers & its bottom line.

If you can do those two things, you'll attract great interns, and should be able to net some great full-timers as well.



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