Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

The retention rates of hires who have internship and co-op experience have been gradually decreasing in recent years, according to results of NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey.

In the years immediately following the recession, this “retaining” effect was relatively modest at both the one-year and five-year benchmarks. Since 2009, the average one- and five-year retention rates for all three groups—new hires who were converted interns/co-ops from within an organization (internal), new hires who gained internship/co-op experience with another employer (external), or new hires who had no such experience at all—have been gradually decreasing, albeit with some up and down movement. (See Figure 1.)

Interestingly, these percentages all generally move in tandem with each other, which indicates that it is more so employers’ hiring practices, not necessarily market forces, that are bolstering this “retaining” effect.

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 Survey report is available to participants through MyNACE. An executive summary of the 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey is available on NACEWeb.