You should hire co-ops

Co-op (paid internships) are an effective option for tech companies that need talent. If set up well, they have many upsides.

Co-op students join for 4, 8, or 12-month terms. They are cheaper than full-time hires, and you may be eligible for one or more federal and provincial funding resources, including grants and wage subsidies.

Do you remember when you first started your career? How exciting and new everything was! Co-op students are similar and will often energize your team with their fresh perspective and enthusiasm. You can improve your onboarding by getting their feedback and help. Since they stay for fixed terms, this means more iterations than doing this solely with full-time hires.

By hiring co-op students, you provide management experience for your full-time staff. If someone is interested in becoming a manager, they can try managing a co-op student first. There is a natural end date, so if they don’t like it, they don’t have to continue. No need to change their role and then have to change it back.

Interviewing and hiring a co-op student also provides interview experience for your full-time staff. Since they join for fixed terms, there are more iterations possible to practice and refine interviewing skills.

At a company level, hiring co-ops helps you build relationships with the universities. You are also growing your candidate pipeline for the future. As students graduate, they may want to rejoin you in a full-time role.

Lastly, you support students beginning their career. I started my professional software engineering career thanks to the Simon Fraser University co-op program. It helped me break into the video game industry more easily than it would have been otherwise.

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.