A toolkit for hiring interns for your startup in Singapore

Photo credits: NUS Overseas Colleges

Every startup hires interns. If not, almost every one. They’re a good way to introduce students to the world of entrepreneurship or the working world in general, and also to inject youthful energy into the team, as any innovative enterprise would need. Much has been written about hiring interns on Tech in Asia, so here’s a ‘toolkit’ to make sure you know how exactly to go about it!

1. Know the seasons

In Singapore, due to educational semesters and cycles, we usually get three main batches of interns, although a minority will be available off these main ‘seasons’:

• January to June: Guys who are fresh out from NS and waiting for university (Group I)
• May to August: Current (local) university students doing summer internships (Group II)
• September to December: Polytechnic students doing their industrial attachments (Group III)

2. Know the channels

Of course, for each batch, there are different ways hire and reach out most effectively. If we follow the above three bullet points respectively, here’s a basic summary (and are all FOC):

• InternSG, StartupJobs, Jobstreet, standard job search websites (I)
• Reach out to schools and get employer access to career portals (II)
• Submit an “internship proposal” to the respective career office (III)

(I) In general, writing and positioning the job posts are important too. For the guys in the first group, the prospect of not doing admin work and having the title of “intern at a startup” on their CV in future will excite them though. Ensure your job post gives them the idea of working at a fun company and doesn’t sound like your typical paper-filer kind of position. For instance,

• Instead of: you will assist with business development in a fast-paced environment.
• Try: as an intern, you can expect to dabble in business development in Singapore’s fast-growing startup ecosystem.

(II) Reaching university students are a little more straightforward. The general rule of thumb of writing job posts remains the same, except that they love to be put in-charge of something and have the autonomy to innovate (especially those seriously looking into startups, and not investment bank rejects). For each school, the arrangements are as follows:

• SMU: Dato Kho Hui Meng Career Centre (website). An ‘account manager’ will be in touch and you’ll be requested you to fill up 7-8 questions per job post over email, and they will do the posting (in an internal portal called OnTrac II) and collecting of CVs for you. OnTrac II has strong filters and targeting features, so be assured that if you are hiring coders, business students won’t be able to apply at all.
• NTU: Career and Advancement Office (website). You will be able to get a TalentSite employer account, where you log in with your own email and password and you’re able to post jobs and customize the targeting yourself. It’s like another StartupJobs altogether.
• NUS: In general, career services are handled by individual schools or faculties. Click here for a list of the faculties and departments. Also, do get in touch with the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) Program, an entrepreneurship programme run by NUS Enterprise.

(III) Polytechnic programmes are more structured, although you can expect a handful of students who ‘deviate’ from the system (and I appreciate their courage and enterprising spirit for doing that) and apply directly to you.

However, to reach the main bulk, get in touch with Career Offices (it may be poly-wide or faculty-specific) and be updated about ‘openings’ for you to send them your internship proposals. When application season comes, some offices collate CVs for you while others get them to apply directly to you.

Either way, you get a bunch who’s a little less experienced and hence more risk-averse, but it’s possible to find shining stars among a group of up to 20-30 applicants.

3. Know the expectations

We continue in our three groups. The stage we’re talking about now is of course during the interview, where expectations of both sides have to be managed. For a generic overview and partially what inspired this section, read this article.

4. Know the process

A parting note