The Power of Internships: Fuel Your Growth

 

When you have your own business and things are looking good, it is easy to imagine what life would be like with some hired help. The tangible benefits aside, an employee can give you a sense of achievement and purpose that you will have missed working on your own. The difficulty, however, lies in judging when the right time to commit to employing someone is. It can be difficult to judge if it will benefit your business needs, which is where the power of internships is realised.

An internship can help you to assess the potential for becoming an employer without much investment. For example, if you require someone who needs to be able to understand and analyse large quantities of information, then a university student on a Placement and Training Year (PTY) may be of value to you. Somtimes a student can have up to 3 placements during the year, so you don't need to have them for the entire year and there is not a legal requirement to pay them. However, some remuneration on an incentive basis would be a wise choice because that will let you gauge how well employees will respond to incentives in your business.

It is, however, important to remember that you may not recognise the benefits of an employee for a few months: you will see an initial dip in productivity as you have to take time out to train up the new employee, which reduces your capacity for work. You also have to account for time spent observing the new employee, because there will inevitably be mistakes during the first few weeks.

Nevertheless, the internship will give you a rough idea of whether employment is likely to benefit you financially, or whether there is the prospect for benefit from employment. At the end of the day, the decision needs to be visceral to some extent: you just know when it is right.