Are Your Internship Offers Competitive?

November is the most popular month for filling and completing internship offers in the agricultural industry. If your organization is going to hire the best talent, you better be finalizing your internship offers now!

They say it’s a job seeker’s marketplace, and data collected by AgCareers.com lends this idea to truth. We surveyed agricultural employers about their recruitment and hiring of students for the 2017-2018 Intern & New Grad Hiring and Compensation Report.

Even though the clear majority (73%) of ag organizations told us that intern pay rates were non-negotiable, interns have options – they’re often evaluating multiple internship offers. For those employers that have a bit of flexibility, they said they can negotiate intern pay rates based on some of the following criteria:

• tenure (second-year interns)
• education level of the student (freshman, sophomore, junior)
• flexibility within a predetermined range
• applicant has additional qualifications (such as a commercial driver’s license)
• business area hiring, e.g. engineering vs. production

Beyond the pay rate, offering interns benefits is becoming more commonplace and a method for staying competitive. Only 20% of employers do NOT offer benefits to interns, as compared to 36% in our 2014 survey. The most common benefit offered to interns was overtime pay. A laptop or work computer was the second most-offered intern benefit with more than half of participating companies offering them.

More than half of employers offered housing allowances to their interns. Housing was also noted as one of the top ways organizations compete against other employers to attract interns to their companies.

Even if you aren’t ready to make an offer in November, there’s still time to recruit an intern for your organization. Post your internship opportunity on AgCareers.com for FREE! Contact your AgCareers.com account representative or email agcareers@agcareers.com now to claim your free internship job posting.