Summer vacation is almost over. The summer that was supposed to be “The Summer of Recovery” didn’t prove itself to be one. In today’s economic climate, business owners are apprehensive about hiring help. The cycles of hope and despair that have been plaguing us for at least a year have left people disillusioned and less adventurous.

If you need help in your small business, and don’t want to hire people because you are afraid you’ll have to let them go a few months later, maybe an internship program is the way to go.

Internship is defined by the Department of Labor by certain criteria: It has to be in the same academic or vocational field, the intern should not replace any paid worker and the internship should primarily benefit the intern, not the employer. The employer, on the other hand, “derives no immediate advantage” from the internship.

Read on, not all internships are born alike.

If you establish contact with a higher education institute that has courses in your field, you have a way into the talent pool of the future. The young generation is most likely up to date with new technology which can make your life easier, or move your business forward.

Those students want to learn. They think of your business as their profession of choice and they are willing not to get paid to learn how it works in the real world.

What a wonderful way to screen your future employees, and keep the ones you like by turning them into student employees. If you want to get young talent into your business, you might have just hired the new whiz-kid.

An article in ReadWrite Start has 5 tips on creating an internship program. How to create a work plan, how to assign a good supervisor (it can be you…), how to give and take feedback and provide compensation when the work that’s done doesn’t fall  into the categories mentioned above.