University recruiting and talent acquisition (TA) have undergone significant transformations in recent years. Corporate internship programs have evolved to become a crucial part of the talent acquisition process. However, with these changes comes a unique set of challenges that university recruiters and talent mobility leaders must navigate. In this blog post, we’ll explore how Relocity, a cutting-edge workforce mobility platform and native mobile app for talent on the move, can address the pain points that talent acquisition professionals face when managing corporate internships.

1. Competition for talent

Securing top talent for internships can be fiercely competitive. Well-known companies often find themselves vying for the same pool of promising candidates. To stand out, leaders must devise effective strategies that attract and retain the best interns. Relocity offers a solution by streamlining the relocation process for interns, making it easier and more enjoyable for them to join your organization. With a hassle-free, engaging relocation experience, your company becomes more appealing to top-tier talent.

By enhancing your benefits package, Relocity strengthens your employee value proposition (EVP) and helps your firm stand out from your competition. For example, whether you provide lump sums or fully managed moves, Relocity improves the intern relocation experience. Take Relocity Guide for Interns, for instance, our innovative relocation experience for lump sum policies. Driven by artificial intelligence that aligns with the needs and expectations of mobile employees, Guide for Interns provides a highly personalized, mobile-first relocation experience. Delivered through our intuitive native mobile application and powered by our workforce mobility platform, this solution empowers mobile employees with a self-serve relocation experience where they complete critical steps at their convenience while on the go. Guide also engages interns before their start dates with Community features, including an in-app activity feed and peer-to-peer chat. This solution doesn't just manage lump sums, but elevates your Duty of Care. 

If you’re moving international or VIP interns, Relocity Concierge for Interns is the way to go. This solution takes intern relocation to the next level with our host-led destination services and rental assistance. Leveraging our native mobile app, Concierge for Interns offers direct communication and guidance from our expert Personal Hosts. Relocity Hosts go the extra mile to help interns find affordable housing in the right neighborhood and calm any fears along the way. Ultimately, Relocity for Interns allows you to relocate the right candidates, no matter their origin location.

2. Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are fundamental aspects of any successful internship program. Creating an inclusive environment where interns from diverse backgrounds feel valued is paramount. Relocity understands the importance of diversity and can assist with providing tailored relocation support that accommodates the unique needs of all interns, regardless of background or orientation. By fostering inclusivity during onboarding and continuing throughout the end-to-end relocation process, your organization can demonstrate its commitment to equal opportunities.

Relocity Concierge for Interns and Relocity Guide for Interns help university recruiters and talent acquisition teams address the challenge of DEI within intern populations. With Relocity Concierge for Interns, we match interns with Hosts based on demographics, interests, and backgrounds, ensuring a rich and personalized relocation experience for everyone and ensuring that each intern is placed in a neighborhood and accommodations in which they can thrive. This personalized approach makes it possible for interns from diverse backgrounds to find suitable neighborhoods and temporary housing.

Relocity's app is also designed to provide equitable support to all interns. Our application offers personalized neighborhood recommendations, saving interns time and effort in the home-finding process. Our app also includes personalized content, such as local registrations, city overviews, real estate trends, demographics, and weather insights, tailored to each intern's relocation details. By facilitating a seamless and personalized relocation experience, Relocity helps university recruiters and talent acquisition teams diversify their workforce by bringing in interns who hail from around the world, and ultimately enhance the EVP by fostering a more inclusive work environment.

3. Internship program design

Crafting meaningful internship programs is essential for providing valuable experiences to interns and aligning with company goals. Relocity's platform removes much of the typical firefighting and logistics workload of talent acquisition and global mobility leaders, freeing up time to focus on designing structured and meaningful programs that ensure interns receive the best possible learning opportunities.

Relocity enables you to work more efficiently by alleviating the common pain point of lack of digital processes. By addressing and automating much of the relocation process, Relocity significantly reduces the amount of time university recruiters and talent acquisition teams need to spend supporting interns’ individual relocation needs for home-finding, settling-in, and other relocation guidance.

Moreover, the data insights we provide are instrumental in enhancing program design. They enable proactive troubleshooting to settle all interns quickly and effectively. Our data-driven insights also assist in crafting realistic relocation budgets and making informed decisions about your intern program, ensuring that you meet the needs of your interns and team alike.

4. Onboarding and engagement

Effective onboarding, mentorship, and training are crucial for intern success within an organization. Relocity's platform and mobile app can assist in the onboarding process by providing relocating interns with personalized information and resources. With a well-prepared and well-oriented intern, you can expect better engagement and performance.

Our automated onboarding process saves valuable time for your team and ensures a smooth transition for interns. Additionally, the Relocity app offers a branded communication platform, enabling you to send messages and notifications about your mission, values, and culture to interns in your brand colors, creating a cohesive and engaging experience.

Lastly, our new Community features within Relocity Guide for Interns encourages discussions on trending topics, while the chat feature facilitates networking and peer-to-peer support. These tools help interns find potential commuting partners or roommates, simplifying their relocation process. By providing a digital platform that streamlines onboarding and fosters communication and networking, Relocity digitalizes intern program management and enhances your EVP.

5. Remote internships

The rise of remote work has also impacted internships, introducing new challenges in terms of engagement, communication, and intern performance monitoring. Relocity can facilitate remote internships by providing tools for virtual ongoing communication, intern networking, and business travel support. Our platform ensures that remote interns have a connected experience among their internship cohort and supports their needs for finding temporary housing for their travel to office locations when needed.

Our new Community features within Relocity Guide for Interns foster connection among your intern cohort. Through our platform, we enable intern engagement even before the internship starts. Leveraging our Community features (available through Relocity Guide for Interns) and employer-branded messages and notifications, we help interns feel connected and supported from the get go, reducing Gen Zers’ tendency (68% as of spring 2023) to continue shopping internship offers until their start date and helping you overcome some of the unique challenges of remote program management.

Relocity also provides crucial tools for performance monitoring, allowing your team to track intern relocation activities and avoid last-minute issues. Real-time data updates offer a deep dive into each intern’s progress throughout the relocation journey, helping you prevent unpleasant surprises (such as finding out someone doesn’t have housing) on the first day. In essence, Relocity helps you strengthen your EVP by supporting fully remote programs, simplifies intern communication and engagement, and expands your opportunity to hire interns all over the world.

6. Compliance and legal considerations

Navigating legal and compliance issues related to internships can be complex. Leaders must ensure intern classification, adhere to wage and hour laws, and comply with labor regulations. Leaders must also consider your organization’s obligations to provide Duty of Care for interns.

This is where Relocity can help. Duty of Care is the moral obligation of employers to protect their transferees during assignment and relocation from undue risks. While an intern is traveling or living in a new city for business purposes, the company he or she works for has a moral and ethical duty not to cause, or fail to prevent, any physical or psychological harm to the transferee. This level of care helps firms avoid situations that might jeopardize their brand reputations. To safeguard their interns and reputations, employers can demonstrate Duty of Care by helping their interns get the right guidance on selecting safe neighborhoods for housing, finding reliable commuting options, and avoiding scams.

Employers should build as much relocation support into internships as possible to help young talent navigate difficult housing markets and cover unforeseen expenses. Consider the markets you’re pulling interns into. If you host internships in major cities and don’t help with home-finding, you’re asking inexperienced, college-age talent to secure living arrangements in expensive and competitive markets. Interns could fall victim to leasing scams and even violent crime if they don’t know which areas to avoid. By leveraging Relocity, employers can demonstrate a commitment to intern welfare and fulfill the obligation to safeguard interns, ultimately protecting the company's brand reputation.

7. Evaluation and feedback

Gathering regular feedback from interns is vital for program innovation, intern retention, and competitive strength. Relocity's platform includes features for ongoing communication and monitoring, making it easier to gather feedback from interns through pulse surveys. 

Within Relocity Guide for Interns, you can monitor conversations within the Community feature and keep a pulse on intern feedback. Our in-app ratings give you a good sense of intern satisfaction with the mobile app and its content and features. Our ability to facilitate pulse surveys gives you the chance to get real-time, helpful insights about how the internship is going.

The data insights we provide also play a pivotal role in helping you anticipate relocation issues and improve your overall intern program. These insights not only help your team get ahead of potential problems, but also support streamlining your processes. Relocity reduces your workload and provides invaluable insights that will shape the ongoing evolution of your intern program.

8. Talent mobility

For global organizations, managing internships involving international mobility can be daunting. Handling visa, immigration, and relocation issues for international interns requires expertise. Relocity specializes in global mobility and can assist in managing international intern relocations, ensuring a smooth transition for these individuals. 

This is where our longstanding reputation as a leading destination services and rental assistance provider comes into play. Relocity offers a comprehensive solution to university recruiters and talent acquisition teams to address the challenge of intern talent mobility. Relocity Concierge for Interns allows each user to benefit from access to a dedicated Personal Host, who helps them transition from their home to an unfamiliar country or city with specialized services and personalized guidance. Our Hosts help interns making international moves to transition smoothly through securing housing in a safe neighborhood to ensuring that they have a banking account set up and other essential services. As we’ve already pointed out, this tailored solution not only enhances the intern experience, but also reduces the logistical burdens on recruiters and talent acquisition teams.

By enhancing your benefits package, Relocity provides a game-changing boost to your EVP and distinguishes your firm from the competition. And to reiterate, our approach enables you to tap top candidates from around the world.

9. Resource allocation

Allocating resources, both in terms of budget and staff, to support internship programs can be challenging. Relocity's platform can help optimize resource allocation by streamlining the relocation process, reducing administrative burdens, and ensuring cost-efficiency.

Relocity Guide for Interns uses artificial intelligence within our user-friendly app to provide tailored housing recommendations. Plus, the in-app marketplace stretches lump sum stipends further with furniture discounts and waived apartment application fees for units in safe neighborhoods, promoting financial prudence and Duty of Care. 

Our other intern solution, Relocity Concierge for Interns, assigns a dedicated personal host to each work order and is billed based only on completed services, reducing the need for costly full-service packages. Using tech-driven efficiency, this solution minimizes administrative costs, saving time and resources. By combining data and AI, Relocity Concierge for Interns enhances decision-making and cost-effectiveness.

Importantly, the data insights provided by Relocity allow your team to gain a comprehensive understanding of the true cost of relocation and the specific services and support interns require. This valuable information empowers you to optimize your program spend, make informed decisions, and work more effectively and efficiently, ultimately enhancing the overall success of the intern program.

10. Post-internship pathways

Creating clear pathways for interns to transition into full-time roles or future career opportunities within the organization is crucial for talent retention. Relocity can assist with creating a seamless transition process for interns who wish to continue their journey with your company, fostering talent mobility.

Our intern solutions ensure that each internship begins on the right foot and help you demonstrate genuine care for your young talent’s well-being. By fostering a positive and engaging relocation experience for interns, Relocity cultivates a fantastic first impression of you, the employer. When interns feel valued and supported during their relocation and internship experience, they are more likely to view the organization as a desirable employer and eagerly embrace the opportunity to join the team full-time. 

This initial positive encounter is crucial for talent engagement, setting the stage for successful intern-to-hire conversions. To summarize, Relocity’s approach helps you stay ahead of the curve when it comes to attracting the best Gen Z talent and enhances your chances of meeting early career fill-to-hire goals within your target time frame.

Let’s solve your biggest challenges around intern program management

University recruiting and talent mobility leaders face a multitude of challenges when managing corporate internships. However, with the support of Relocity's innovative workforce mobility platform and native mobile app, you can address these challenges effectively. By streamlining the relocation process, fostering inclusivity, and ensuring compliance, Relocity empowers organizations to create exceptional internship experiences that attract top talent and promote talent mobility. Stay ahead in the competitive landscape of university recruiting with Relocity as your strategic partner.

Book a Relocity demo today and witness the future of intern program management. Let us help you engage interns, lower operating costs, and free up time to design meaningful programs – all while ensuring your interns and your bottom line thrive.