Preparing for your first co-op internship hire

You did the interviews and decided to hire a co-op intern; that’s great! To make it a great experience for everyone involved, you’ll want to prepare.

Work with your HR colleague to draft an employment agreement for the co-op. It will be a standard employment agreement with an end date matching the length of the co-op placement.

Arrange to have a company laptop or whatever hardware the co-op will need to do their job. Have it updated with the latest version of the operating system and any required software tools. Enable hard drive encryption and any other security settings.

Create an onboarding checklist for the manager and the co-op. This will be used to track any accounts they need to create or be added to, so they have appropriate access to everything they need. This list can be updated so it’s more complete for future hires.

Keep a lookout for appropriate first-day tasks. These are great to make sure the new hire has everything set up, and it’s a big confidence boost to make a change and post a pull request on your first day! Ideally, they are small, isolated pieces of work that only touch a single code file or so. You can create a label in JIRA or whatever project management software you use to filter for them in the future. They are handy to have around and are easier to find ahead of when you actually need them.

Have a list of any meetings the co-op will need to attend in their first week, from recurring to one-time onboarding ones.

Outline what you would like to happen in the first 30 days of the co-op term, and review this with the co-op in their first week. Schedule a meeting at the 30-day mark to review.

Check with the co-op coordinator about visits and reports they will need during the term. Schedule these into your calendar.

If you’re curious about hiring co-ops at your company, or you’ve had trouble with it in the past, let’s talk. I want to help make you successful, and I think co-ops are a great strategy.