A Well-Designed Summer Internship Program Benefits Companies As Much As It Does Students

Every summer, we happily welcome a group of interns. They’re talented students who always bring us lots of fresh ideas and energy. The 45 interns working in our offices in Denver and New York this year can take great pride in having been selected. We received more than 8,000 applications for the positions we had to fill, so all of our interns demonstrated they could excel in a highly competitive search process.

I really enjoy meeting with the interns and hearing their ideas because their minds are so agile. They come at every challenge with such a fresh and broad perspective. Working with them can be an inspiration for the entire team. When you have developed in-depth experience and expertise in a particular discipline, you can sometimes view new challenges through a narrow lens. Our summer interns encourage us to take a step back and assess situations from a wide angle.

As valuable as the interns are to us, we also make every effort to ensure that the experience is worthwhile for them. I think it’s a mistake if companies hire interns to work on the routine or low-level tasks every department must get done. We make sure our interns take on meaningful assignments and get to work closely with all of their colleagues in a department. They are also asked to do a special project for their group. In some cases, they make recommendations on how to enhance some aspect of the work their department does. Through the years, we have implemented a number of their recommendations. This year, the interns in our technology department in Denver will be participating in a hackathon with their tech colleagues. They’ll be helping us solve technology challenges in a fun, competitive experience that will enable them to put their talents up against colleagues who might be their future peers.

A Pipeline to Full-Time Employment

We fully appreciate how challenging the job market can be for people who have just graduated. A few years ago, we decided to make our internship program a potential pipeline to full-time employment. We decided to focus on students who are just one year away from graduating with a bachelor’s or advanced degree. If interns demonstrate they are a good fit and we have a position available, we want to invite them to join us on a full-time basis.

For hiring managers, there is no better screening tool than having the opportunity to see how someone performs on the job. Over the years, we have offered full-time positions to a good percentage of our interns, and many have gone on to very successful careers. We are quite proud of the fact that three of our current portfolio managers started with the firm as summer interns.

Even if we don’t have available positions to offer, we feel good knowing that having an established firm like OppenheimerFunds on their resumes will help our interns in their career search.

Historically, financial services has not been a very diverse industry. We’ve found that the internship program helps us with our diversity and inclusion initiatives. We are able to reach students with a variety of backgrounds and provide them an opportunity to see if a career in financial services is the right choice for them.

Part of the Team

I really do believe intern programs can be a beneficial experience for everyone when you make the students feel welcome and part of the team. Our full-time employees can take two paid days off each year to do volunteer work. Even though they’re only here for a few months, we also enable our interns to spend a day volunteering. This summer, a number of interns joined their full-time colleagues to teach a financial literacy class at a school for at-risk teens. It was a meaningful day for everyone who participated. The classes were a big hit among the teens who attended. They realized the decisions they make about saving and managing debt can have a major impact on their lives, and the interns saw firsthand how much their knowledge of the financial world can help people.

While they’re here, we also want to make sure the interns get access to senior members of the firm. We invite them to a series of luncheons with leaders from across the firm. These forums provide interns with a deeper understanding of the industry. An intern in a client-service department, for example, gets to hear what people in our investment or sales and marketing departments do. That kind of exposure sometimes inspires the interns to think about a career in a discipline they hadn’t considered.

Talking to the interns is one of my favorite parts of the job. They are smart, engaging and curious. Those luncheons always make it clear to me that the future of our firm and industry will be in very good hands.