Internship program
Also called: intern program, graduate internship
What a good internship looks like
Three traits separate programs that produce hires from ones that produce resentment:
- Paid: above local minimum, ideally on a per-month rate comparable to junior salary scaled by tenure (e.g., 70-80% of an entry-level monthly). Unpaid internships are illegal in much of the EU for substantive work; legality aside, they filter for who can afford to work for free.
- Real work: the intern ships something. Not “shadowing,” not “process documentation no one will read.” A scoped project that benefits the team and gives the intern something to point at later.
- A defined return path: at the end of the internship, both sides know whether a full-time offer is on the table. Ambiguous endings damage both relationship and brand.
What the conversion rate looks like
European SMBs running solid programs report intern-to-full-time conversion rates of 40-70% — higher than any other hiring channel for junior roles, by a wide margin.
The mechanism: the company already knows whether the intern can do the work; the intern already knows whether they like the company. The fit signal at the offer stage is much stronger than for a cold-hired junior.
Where programs fail
- Bait-and-switch: promised work doesn’t materialize; intern spends 3 months on busywork.
- No structured feedback: intern learns whether they have a future at the end, not throughout.
- No structured return offer: a strong intern is left hanging through their final year of study; competitors snap them up.
Where Join fits
Interns sit in Join’s talent pool with their internship-period scorecard attached. When the company opens an entry-level role 6-12 months later, the past interns surface immediately. See the features page.
