Getting polytechnic students to intern with your startup

Tech startups in Singapore seem to share the same headaches, “Where do we find young and motivated eager-beaver teammates to help grow our startup?” Well, good news for those based out of Singapore’s Launchpad@JTC. Various public and private initiatives are being done to push more talent to support the tech ecosystem, one of which is coming from Singapore Polytechnic.

Singapore Polytechnic (SP), one of Singapore’s known education institutes, is just a stone’s throw away from the buzz of Launchpad@JTC. “Internship has always been integral in our curriculum,” highlights Randy Ng, Manager, Entrepreneurship Section, SP Business School.

Traditionally, we will assign them to the larger established corporations, but with the rising interest in the ICT sector and given the close proximity to Launchpad@JTC’s, we felt that our students should be given opportunities to be exposed to this exciting ecosystem and also be contributors of new products in this vertical.

To this end, SP has been working closely with the startups at Launchpad to deploy their students.

The relevant disciplines which tech startups should consider would be School of Digital Media & Infocomm Technology, School of Business and School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering. The youthful and dynamic students, averaging 17-20 years, are generally assigned to companies in the private sector for an internship of between 12-24 weeks.

Basic expectations for employers

Ng explains the expectations that SP has for employers.

First and foremost, we do not wish our students to be coffee runners or just doing standard administrative work where there is limited learning. Ideally, we hope there is a formalised program which is planned out and structured. There can be flexibility and this would be discussed and mutually agreed together with the lecturer-in-charge of the course. At the end of the day, we hope that interns will learn relevant industry skillsets that is similar to that of a junior executive.

SP selects companies on a case-by-case basis. “We generally prefer startups which are more stable (seed-level to Series A and beyond), but yet have an exciting path of progression and growth,” he notes. If the startup is too early at the angel stage, the structure may be too fluid and the interns may not benefit if there are too many shifts in the company’s focus.”

Processing of interns

It takes an average of 3-4 months to get the interns ready for deployment. Ng explains:

For 2016, SP will generally start the deployment exercise in early December 2015. It would be good to contact the relevant persons-in-charge of the courses before that. An administration process will done like the company’s description, defining the jobs scopes and so on forth. Thereafter, the students going for internship will be asked to rank their choices of which company they wish to intern at. Companies will be informed on the success of the match.

Enticing interns to join startups

“Getting a student intern is not much different from that of hiring a full-timer,” says Ng. “For the polytechnic student, their minds are fixated first on pay, followed by prestige of the company and then by the learning program.” The average internship pay is around S$600-S$800 per month. Ng encourages startups to be on the higher end of the pay scale to encourage the interns to review and apply for the company’s internship offer.

He does not deny that there will always be a group of polytechnic students interested in applying for the MNCs. But for those who are more gung-ho, Ng has observed that tech startups have a generally younger team, which it builds upon the whole familiarity and closeness at work.

Personal experiences by an intern

Post-internship