Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

Does your organization allow its interns to work from home? That was a question recently asked by an employer member to members of the NACE Community.

One URR professional said that while her organization doesn’t allow interns to work from home, it does allow students who have spent a summer interning there to work from campus part time. The organization has a “Student Remote Work Standards” agreement that both the intern and his or her manager are required to sign. 

Another URR professional from an organization that has allowed interns to work remotely explains that his company manages its employees by outcomes rather than process, and is more concerned about the quantity and quality of projects and other tasks they complete than it is with the hours they put in.

He adds that while managing a remote work force brings many challenges, the rewards are worth the effort because his company is able to better tap into talent that is often nontraditional and otherwise diverse, including students who continue to attend classes part time while working the full-time internship or vice versa.

On the other hand, a member from a company that doesn’t permit its interns to work from home explains that the entry-level roles it recruits for are co-located with project teams at one of its corporate offices or at a customer site, as are its interns. The company also aims to provide its interns with an immersive experience so they can truly get a sense of its culture and what a career there would be like. As such, a “work-from-home” arrangement simply doesn’t make sense for her organization.

Join the discussion about interns working from home in the NACE Community.