Ask HN: Good resources for conducting effective developer internship programs?

I’ve been hiring interns and managing internships for the past 10+ years.

The number of interns at any given time varies from 1 to 10+

We were a small team at some point (less than 10) and now the company is bigger (~500 engineers).

We hire most interns if they have a successful internship and are interested in working with us.

I really love working with young engineers, mentoring them and helping them shape their careers.

I don’t have any specific resources to pint you to, but typically what I do is to have a bunch of well defined/specified projects, that can take anywhere from 2 to 4 months to complete.

Projects vary so I can accommodate to their interest if they have anything specific in mind:

- testing

- api development

- frontend

- systems programming

- etc

If I’m the mentor of an group of interns, I make sure I meet with them on a daily basis. I will also meet with them 1:1 and provide prompt and actionable feedbak on how they can improve.

I can say that we at my company are really satisfied with the results we’ve yielded during the past 10+ years, and the talent we have been able to recruit and groom through that program.

As the company or as a mentor? How big is the company? How many interns are you expecting? Are you asking about the recruiting funnel or just the day to day?

There are a lot of resources from companies about the internship project, less so on everything else.

You might want to look into hiring someone who has organized these programs before.

Any practical advice is welcome as well.