This morning I attended an event hosted by Reading University all about hiring interns into start ups, smaller business and charities, with funding from Santander. The scheme is called the Reading Internship Scheme and in fact this is a nationwide scheme that Santander sponsor at 85 universities UK wide.

The scheme is flexible in terms of who it opens the opportunities up to, including part time, full time and term time internships, meaning it understands that what businesses and students need will vary. 

The talk this morning highlighted the value to businesses and the value to students of these internships and included the following:

1. It helps connect students with small businesses and charities that might not have the resource to promote their opportunities

2. The scheme encourages businesses to consider students from any degree discipline across the university, meaning that they embrace transferable skills

3. Provides excellent brand awareness for the business when the students then return to campus and talk about their experiences 

4. Opportunity for students to get real work experience and refine and develop transferable skills in industry

5. Santander partially (or for charities fully) fund the salary

There were some excellent examples shared of where companies had hired interns whereby the work they had completed and the innovative ideas they had contributed had had a huge positive impact on the business. This is a really way of promoting opportunities and supporting our next generation.