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The Internship Institute declares that it's "open season" for businesses and non-profit organizations to recruit interns and plan ahead to make summer programs successful.
Host organizations should heed the easily overlooked academic calendar and window of opportunity to reap the benefits of recruiting college students and other workforce talent and creating a successful internship program.
"What too few employers and organizations realize is that internships represent a tremendous untapped opportunity to create a strategic business advantage," explains Matthew Zinman, executive director and founder of The Internship Institute. "Companies and non-profits can infuse their bottom-line with valuable talent while addressing labor shortages, skills gaps, 'brain drain,' productivity deficiencies, and fulfill corporate social responsibility goals while yielding significant gains for the bottom-line."
The Internship Institute is the non-profit affiliate of the Z University (ZU) brand, which markets a turnkey internship system. 
According to The Internship Institute, those wishing to take immediate action to establish an internship program or improve an existing one should follow three key steps:
1. Define internal needs and wants – Companies should develop a job description based on defined needs such as projects involving research, writing, planning and online/telephone outreach.
2. Ask those in the know – Contact the career services departments of area higher education institutions well ahead of summer to establish relationships and how to best recruit the right candidates based on defined needs
3. Prepare internally – Internship programs don't run themselves, but advance preparation is key. Resources such as Z University's Intern Toolkit will make intern programs as easy as possible to implement and improve.
"Interns are highly capable, highly motivated and – if well managed – highly valuable," notes Zinman. The five core skills that bring value to just about any business involve: research, writing, planning, telephone and computer work." Examples among the hundreds of meaningful intern projects: having interns conduct surveys, perform competitive intelligence research, uncover and pursue marketing opportunities, develop and manage website content, write and edit articles for publication, plan events and prepare presentations.
Internship programs provide a "win-win" solution for companies by addressing social concerns and boosting corporate competitiveness. Making internships available to candidates in the public workforce can also demonstrate a corporate commitment to underserved and underprivileged populations, while creating another talent pool of productive workers.
-from AccountingWeb.com
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