On July 28, employers celebrated National Intern Day. This day was created in 2017 as a way for employers to recognize their interns, and it has since grown to also include discussions on the importance of internships and advocate for change to improve the equity and availability of internship opportunities. With that in mind, both NACE and NACE Executive Director Shawn VanDerziel shared research on social media highlighting the impact that internships can have on college students preparing to enter the workforce and how the landscape has changed in recent years. Additionally, NACE members started a discussion thread in the NACE Community to share their plans, with select responses highlighted below. If you’re a NACE member and would like to join this conversation, be sure to check out the discussion thread in the NACE Community!

“We are doing a few things: Having mixer [with] ice coffee and designer donuts [and] having managers and mentors send notes on interns that will be on display in the background; having leadership come talk to them; taking them to an offsite event for teambuilding; and providing interns with customized Hydro flask bottles/cookies.”

Maritz Fernandez
Manager of Emerging Talent, PetSmart, Inc.

“We added on a couple things this year since our group is definitely bigger than the last few years. We [had] their workspace decorated before they arrived with a sign on their monitor ('Happy National Intern Day') and a company shirt at their workspace. We had personalized decorated cookies made for each intern (one says 'National Intern Day', one has company logo, and the third with their name).

We also had the teams that have interns this summer submit a video clip of their appreciation for the intern(s) and our marketing team is putting these together into one video that was shown during our 'appreciation meeting' that the interns and their managers attended that afternoon. That is when they will receive their cookies.”

Traci Tompkins
Senior HR Generalist, Ghafari Associates LLC

“This year Symba launched a Paid Internships Pledge to encourage companies to commit to paying their interns fair wages. We started this initiative as 40% of internships remain unpaid, disproportionally affecting women, Black, and Hispanic people. This press release can provide more context: https://www.prweb.com/releases/2022/7/prweb18815366.htm
We also posted on social media to celebrate the handful of interns we currently have on our team.”

Mitra LeBuhn
Head of Impact & Communications, Symba