Ahva Sadeghi, Co-founder and CEO of Symba.
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In 2020, roughly one out of every two companies made a huge mistake: They canned their internship programs.
Now, most wish they hadn’t done so. “Help wanted” and “now hiring” are phrases currently ubiquitous across storefronts, company websites and social media. By closing the pipeline for fresh talent during the pandemic, these companies are paying the price for their short-term thinking. It may have cut costs at the time, but that move came at a different price.
This is especially true for organizations that curtailed their campus recruiting efforts specifically. Many of the students on college campuses between 2020 and 2022 have now graduated and could have been an incredibly timely human resource now that the labor market is stretched so thin.
With a recession likely headed our way, businesses may again be on the lookout for costs they can cut with minimal negative impact. To some, internship and recruitment can appear at a glance to be a relatively safe corner to cut, but doing so can create ramifications that may last years and alter the trajectory of a company’s growth. Here are three reasons why hitting the brakes on your campus recruiting programs is a bad decision.
1. You’ll miss out on the best talent...
...and your competitors will benefit.
Halting or even just temporarily pausing your campus recruiting means that the brightest minds just entering your industry probably aren’t going to end up on your team—and could even land at a top competitor.
College students are usually at the earliest stages of their careers, eager to explore their options and find a company that aligns with their goals. “First-mover” advantage is a term in marketing for the competitive benefits of being the first product in a category on the market—consumers tend to think of that first product as the de facto standard that others have to measure up to—but there’s a similar lesson to be gleaned for recruiting talent, as well. By removing yourself from the conversation when tomorrow’s workers are just learning about who is who in your industry, you’re giving them time to build positive associations with competitors. That makes it more difficult to attract them in future years.
Having talented people working for your company is a huge part of whether or not it will be successful, and those who come on early tend to work harder, be more loyal to the company and stick around longer. By ceding ground to competitors on campuses, you’re giving them the first chance to snap up talent that could easily turn into ideal, long-term employees.
2. Your brand reputation could take a hit.
Recruiting programs such as internships are critical components of a company’s brand awareness efforts. Maintaining a positive company image to both the general public as well as current and future employees is important.
When companies cancel their internship programs, especially if the internships were already offered to candidates, there can be a significant impact on brand image. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020 and a number of companies shelved their programs, students were upset and a swell of negative sentiment spread throughout social media. It even made waves in the press; take for example the case of Yelp, which was put in an unenviable position in 2020 after a number of articles put them front and center of the wave of internship cancellations around the country.
Something else that’s important to remember: people talk. And Gen Z is more vocal than ever! If you curtail campus activities that your company is expected to engage with, that won’t go unnoticed, and there could be speculation on why that decision was made. That speculation could easily turn negative, and you will likely have little ability to control that narrative.
In 2020, there were several lists made to track companies who were canceling their internships and expose companies canceling their programs. These lists were largely made and maintained by students, the people most invested in those internships—and those whose perception of the companies that found themselves on the lists were most significantly impacted.
3. You’re setting yourself back to square one.
Developing a robust university recruiting program requires consistency and strong internal buy-in to be successful. These programs don’t magically appear overnight; they are a result of hundreds or thousands of hours of preparation and planning to set them up for success—not to mention the considerable financial resources put into them.
Taking a year off of these programs makes it very difficult to spin them back up quickly. Personnel has to be put back in place, and there’s a good chance that not everyone will be able or willing to return to their position in the recruiting or internship team. And if you lay off employees when canceling or pausing the program, you’ll have to rehire and potentially rebuild, which is expensive. You’ll also have to go through much of the entire process of planning and getting executive support for the program all over again—and justify why it’s worth restarting something that was canceled not long before.
Additionally, the rapidly changing wants and needs of each generation require that internship and recruitment programs stay at the forefront of trends among entry-level and college-age workers. Without staying actively engaged in the marketplace, it's harder to adapt your program and stay competitive in the marketplace. That means a wealth of additional legwork (and costs) will be needed to get your program back up to speed when you decide to make it active once again.
Remain forward-looking.
Companies that canceled or de-emphasized their campus recruitment activities in 2020 or later are paying the price now. They’ll continue to be impacted by the disadvantages they accrued in talent retention and brand reputation. Their pipeline of motivated, loyal talent is not as strong as it would have been had those internships continued in some form. In 2023, we should pay attention to the lessons learned from past mistakes and not hamstring future growth in the name of short-term benefits.
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