Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

From where do employers source their interns and co-ops? And when do they start the recruiting process?

In 2017, employers sourced approximately half of their interns and co-ops from open applications and about 40 percent directly from their contacts at career centers, according to NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Report. (See Figure 1.)

On the other hand, few employers—only about 10 percent—sourced interns and co-ops directly from faculty contacts.

In terms of timing, employers began the recruiting process for interns an average of eight months prior to their internship program’s start date. For co-ops, this window was more narrow at six months.

By company size, larger employers generally started recruiting both interns and co-ops earlier than did smaller employers. In fact, the smallest employers—those with 500 or less employees—started recruiting interns just four months in advance.

NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey was conducted from November 21, 2016, to February 17, 2017, from NACE employer members; there were 276 respondents, representing 26.4 percent of all eligible respondents. The 2017 Internship & Co-op Report is available to participants through MyNACE. An executive summary is available on NACEWeb.