how it works and why it is important

The current state of the market is such that many employers do not take students on for internships, considering it unprofitable. After all, the student may not return, and the time spent on him will be wasted, which actually happens sometimes. But by sharing our results, we want to show that student internship is a useful tool for attracting and increasing brand awareness, which should not be neglected.

Practice in numbers

Let's not keep you waiting and move straight to our achievements over the last two academic years:

• more than 200 students completed an internship in the IT function of Severstal;

• we worked with students from 23 educational institutions and five cities: Vorkuta, Voronezh, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Cherepovets;

• 70% of students received an “excellent” grade for completing their internship and 30% received a “good” grade;

• 15% of interns became employees of the IT function of Severstal after completing their internship.

After reading the material below, you will understand how these figures were achieved.

How does the internship go?

Contrary to expectations, the internship process is not only about students going to work, but also a lot of preparatory work, which, like an iceberg, becomes visible only when you dive in. Our process takes place in eight stages:

1. Understanding the quantitative need for interns. Before the start of the academic year, we collect the quantitative demand for students for practical training, as well as a list of educational institutions with which we will cooperate. We determine the most suitable areas of training, taking into account the curriculum, interests and skills of students.

In addition, collecting the wishes of managers regarding the number of interns allows us to ensure an even workload for the employees who will be involved in training students.

2. Transfer of needs to educational institutions. Once the applications have been collected, they must be submitted to the educational institutions of interest to us.

3. Selection of students for internship. This may surprise some people, but we actually do select students and at the same time give them the opportunity to gain experience in interviews.

This is a very useful tool, thanks to which we select those guys who are motivated to undergo the internship as effectively as possible, and our employees do not get a pig in a poke for three or four weeks. In addition, the guys can understand how much their interests coincide with the interests of the future manager, even before the start of the internship.
It is important for us that the guys know their development areas and can improve their soft and hard skills in the chosen IT field. After all, there is always a chance that the student will return to us in a year. Therefore, following the interview, we provide developmental feedback.

4. Coordination and signing of the contract. Of course, no cooperation is possible without preparing and signing documents with the educational institution.

5. Preparing the student for his/her internship. The hottest weather comes three weeks before the student leaves. Some of the internship areas involve training students in metallurgical workshops, because they also need IT specialists. Therefore, some of our guys need to undergo a medical examination and additional training in labor protection. Safety is our top priority.

Once we have sorted out the occupational safety and health, we begin to work closely with the student and his internship supervisor.

For managers, we hold meetings where we discuss the process and define areas of responsibility. In a separate section, we talk about how to develop Generation Z kids: what to pay attention to and what features to consider when working with them.

On the first day, the student must leave us with a full understanding of his actions: where to take the documents, where to undergo introductory training on labor protection and get a pass, etc.

Usually at this stage the kids have a lot of questions, which are more or less always the same. Hand on heart, I can admit that answering the same thing every time is very tiring, because there are a lot of kids and they come throughout the year.

To optimize our working time, we are introducing a telegram bot into the process. Its task is to answer the most frequently asked questions. Moreover, our interns actively participated in defining these questions and testing the bot.

Perhaps in the future we will share with you the results of implementing the bot into our practice process.

6. Practice. Hooray, we've made it this far!

The guys get into the thick of things on the very first day of their internship. After registration, we, HR specialists, greet them with a small welcome gift (you must admit, it’s nice to get not only experience and knowledge from the internship, but also some merch) and a story about the company.

To make the practice as effective as possible, we have checkpoints. Completing them is assessed with points, which make up the final grade for the practice. This approach allows us to better structure the work and the practice material.

7. Collecting feedback. At the end of the practical training, we collect feedback from all participants in the process to understand how to develop the practice in the future. We also clarify whether the leaders and students are ready to continue working together in the practice in the new academic year in order to form a vision for joint work in the future.

8. Dialogue about career. This is one of our special tools designed to help students navigate the complex world of work. Any trainee who receives an excellent grade can consult with our careers expert.

Why is practice important?

In addition to the measurable results of working with interns, there are also those that cannot be measured so easily. Let's imagine a situation: a student has completed an internship with us, where he managed to participate in an interesting project, mastered useful skills and received a good grade. Then he comes to the educational institution and meets his classmates and teachers. And, naturally, the guys start sharing their experience.

As a rule, students are especially active in discussing impressions: about the company, working with the manager and the knowledge they have gained. And here our student tells his friends that the internship went great, the manager answered all the questions and included them in the work on something interesting, and the new knowledge is really useful and can be used to write a strong diploma project.

What next? The student submits his report on the internship to the department, where the university or college staff will make a logical conclusion: the IT function of Severstal conducts thorough work with students, therefore, this work needs to be continued.

This is how a positive opinion about us is formed in the student environment. The guys who will go to work in a couple of years will already know that the IT function of Severstal is ready to develop them. A positive opinion will also be formed at the educational institution, where all employees responsible for practice will be interested in sending us the most motivated students to work. In the long term, this effect will certainly be very noticeable.

At the same time, our interaction with educational institutions is not limited to practice. To attract students, our employees regularly participate in career forums, hackathons, and also conduct live broadcasts about professions, lectures and much more.

What are the benefits of internship for the company?

As we said at the beginning, 15% of interns become our employees. For business, this will be a key performance indicator and the main argument in favor of conducting internships for students. However, the main argument does not mean the only one. Here is how else this work is useful for the company:

1. Presence in educational institutions. We often participate in events of our partner educational institutions. Such meetings are useful both for us and for the students. We form a database of potential candidates and increase brand awareness. And the students get the opportunity to communicate with our employees, learn about modern information technologies that make steel production digital and safe, and also fall in love with our corporate culture.

2. Help for students. The modern world of professions is huge, and sometimes it is very difficult for a student to determine for himself what he wants to do. Practice allows you to take the first step into a profession, which will give an understanding of “mine/not mine” and will help with the student’s further employment.

3. Personnel reserve for internships and junior positions. We store the students' internship results and their contacts. This way we can quickly find suitable and already verified candidates for our internship program. “IT Hub “Severstal”” or in junior specialist positions.

So what's the bottom line?

Our student practice process has gone through many iterations and changes, and what it looks like now is the result of much work and constant improvement.

Industrial internship is a useful tool for finding future employees, which also allows you to share experience with young professionals.

We are pleased with the results we have achieved, so we plan to continue working with students and further improve the existing process.

Have you done any internships anywhere? Share your experience in the comments!