Internships

St. John’s County School District in St. Augustine, Florida, works with local employers to offer internships to high school students in 18 fields, including architectural design, cybersecurity, medical research, and robotics.

The American Heart Association’s approach to its internship program is to create intentionally designed experiences rather than a collection of activities.

Internship programs are about more than just getting quality hires in the door: Retention metrics reported in NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op Report demonstrate the long-term ROI of having a program.

Approximately one-half of employers responding to NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op Survey report that they provide financial relocation assistance to interns, a benefit that they say also boosts their experiential education programs.

Key metrics for internship programs—offer, acceptance, and conversion rates—all increased among 2024-25 interns compared to 2023-24 interns.

Employers expect to bring in 3.9% more interns in 2025-26 compared with 2024-25, according to NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op Report.

Although the average hourly wage for interns has continued to rise over the past 10 years, due to inflation, it has declined in real terms. Meanwhile, the average hourly wage for co-ops dipped slightly but is up in terms of inflation rates.

An important consideration for employers offering paid internships—an undertaking that should be performed annually—is setting intern salaries.

Students embrace hands-on skills development through experiential learning and report that employers are helping them develop key skills they need as they prepare for the workplace.

In 2024, Protiviti created a PowerBI dashboard to holistically evaluate the performance of more than 300 of its interns and share the data with leadership teams to use when considering full-time offers.

Since the creation of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Buckeye Pathways Summer Internship program five years ago, career readiness has been a central priority.

Launched in 2024, “V Teamer for a Day” is an in-person experience at several key Verizon hub locations designed to immerse potential interns in the company’s culture and develop a sense of belonging.

In response to a national and extensive industry workforce shortage, Garver’s recruitment team has crafted a dedicated university recruiting program that ultimately serves as a pipeline for eventual full-time employees.

Salas O’Brien clears common hurdles when trying to keep interns engaged during the academic year, such as being passive and assuming students will remember their internship experience without ongoing connection.

There are many strategies employers can use to maintain—and even strengthen—ties with their interns when they return to campus and throughout the academic year.

The Maximus Summer Internship Program is a mission-driven talent pipeline that advances workforce leadership and strategically engages with students to achieve excellent outcomes.

The employer winner of the 2025 NACE Technology Excellence Award, GM Financial's intern social media strategy tells the authentic story of the firm’s intern experience and grows its pipeline of students for internships and early career opportunities.

Offers to interns for full-time positions fell along with overall conversion rates even as acceptance rates rose, according to NACE’s latest internship benchmarks.

The small employer winner of the 2025 NACE Recruiting Excellence Award, heritage Moss Adams’ (now Baker Tilly) Summer Internship Experience is designed to build a strong pipeline of skilled career professionals who will elevate the profession and the firm.

In-person activities are the most widely used and effective means for recruiting interns, according to results of NACE’s 2025 Internship & Co-op survey.

Moving to skills-based hiring opens opportunity for a broader demographic of students to access positions where they otherwise would not meet the qualifications. Many employers include skills development in their internship programs to enhance their interns’ career readiness and bolster conversion.

More than 70% of organizations expect to increase or maintain intern hiring, according to NACE’s 2025 Internship & Co-op Report. However, overall intern hiring is expected to fall 3.1%.

To persist toward successful conversion of interns, organizations must not view engagement as a 10-week summer pursuit. Instead, engagement must gain momentum through recruiting and pre-internship, accelerate during the internship itself, and be maintained after interns return to campus.

Relocation assistance may be the secret sauce to attracting top-notch interns.

When students responding to NACE’s 2024 Student Survey were asked to identify the obstacles preventing them from participating in internships, their responses revealed they attributed their decision to a lack of time, concerns over pay, and scant opportunities.

There are several factors linked to the decision to convert for Class of 2024 graduating seniors, according to results of NACE’s 2024 Student Survey.

Hyster-Yale Materials Handling is developing a pre-onboarding program to engage and build excitement among its interns prior to their start date next summer.

Data suggest that providing interns with relocation assistance correlates to better conversion rates for organizations that hope to turn interns into full-time hires.

This past summer, Arup expanded its career readiness programming for summer interns by working with its internal learning and development team to implement a series of competency-focused workshops.

Liberty Mutual has found that one of the most effective ways to maintain or strengthen connections with prior interns when they are on campus is to meet them where they are, such by hosting meetups, dinners, or coffee chats on or near campus.

Global Atlantic Financial Group, the small employer winner of the 2024 NACE Recruiting Excellence Award, addressed a pressing need for increased diversity and innovation and a robust talent pipeline.

Because Liberty Mutual Insurance hires hundreds of interns a year, it equips interns with a wide range of skills and has the skill profile of an intern closely align with its early career roles to prepare interns for potential future full-time roles.

Visa’s internship program is designed to build full-time conversion and provide an exceptional experience for incoming talent. Phill Haig, Visa’s director of early career programs, says Visa’s target conversion rate has been 70%.

Interns who feel committed to the organization because they were well treated are 7.14 times more likely to accept an offer of full-time employment.

Visa has found that hiring diverse talent is easier to accomplish the earlier it can engage students and it helps create a network of brand evangelists who are able to advocate for Visa on campus.

The Williams Companies evaluates talent for internships based on the NACE Career Readiness Competencies, focusing on the competencies where it has seen gaps in its intern class.

Last year, Progressive Insurance achieved an intern conversion rate of 91%, far exceeding the overall conversion rate of 57.6% for 2021-22.

Due to their underrepresentation in the classroom and societal messaging around technology being a “masculine domain,” women in computer science often feel isolated and marginalized. A study demonstrates how women’s experiences in computing internships shape their future career decisions; the findings have implications for both career development professionals and employers who recruit entry-level talent.

Data provided by more than 2,300 bachelor’s degree-level graduating seniors who took part in NACE’s 2023 Student Survey demonstrate that systemic inequities continue to exist in internships—not only in terms of who takes part, but also in terms of who gets paid.

The large-employer winner of the 2023 NACE Award for Recruiting Excellence, DISH’s “Recruit Once, Hire Twice” college recruiting process brings in top interns and works to convert them into full-time hires.

NACE offers suggestions for getting the most out of your organization’s intern surveys.

Document aspects of your organization’s internship program on an ongoing basis to, among other things, help you clarify what you do, how you do it, and why you do it.

NACE offers best practices for internship programs that feed full-time hiring, including recommendations for work assignments, work arrangements, housing and relocation assistance, and program management.