Poll

Per hour

Only registered users are allowed to vote for this poll.
19 votes were received.

>$20	0		0%
18-20	2		11%
16-18	2		11%
14-16	6		32%
12-14	3		16%
10-12	5		26%
<10	1		4%

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I am interested in hiring some college students for 2-3 months to work in my lab this Summer, full time (40-45 hours/week). This is a technical job, suitable for someone seeking an engineering degree. I have plenty of work for them (I can train them) and they can use the extra time to learn something new. I think I have work for 25-30 hours per week and there are downtime (waiting for a component to be ready for next process step) so they can learn to use other tools in the lab, talk to other engineers, or go watch the production line and see how that works, or if they want just text message, I don't care, as long as they are completing their expected task in a reasonable time and show some interest to show up on time and show a positive attitude. This is in NJ where things are expensive. How much should I offer them? I want them to feel useful and earn some bucks, but I can't afford to pay more than I pay some of my regular staff. I am looking for students who can work at least 2-3 months.

I'm going to go with somewhere in the $10 to $16 per hour range. For students, cost of living doesn't really matter as much. The assumption is that they are staying with their parents for the summer or have college housing. They would get minimum wage for work study.

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What do you pay your regular staff? What would you pay an entry-level tech that you needed to train?

I have become uneasy with the whole "internship" phenomenon, as so many employers now treat it as a way to get work out of students for slave wages.

Better to honor what you are offering by calling it a summer job.

I was lucky in one of my summer jobs, I got base part time union wages without benefits. There was an intern two years ago and it was the same way. If they are not getting work/study credit, as a minimum I would go at least halfway between the local wage for fast food and base wage for a new employee. You might want to consider recent hires grumbling the intern is getting the same pay as them with no degree and no experience.

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Whatever it is, it's better than teaching interns -- in our state at least, they must work a full semester for free.

It's a crock, but that is what the state ed department requires and the colleges went along (if they are paid, they won't receive credit)

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Janit
What do you pay your regular staff? What would you pay an entry-level tech that you needed to train?

I have become uneasy with the whole "internship" phenomenon, as so many employers now treat it as a way to get work out of students for slave wages.

Better to honor what you are offering by calling it a summer job.

yes, it is a Summer Job, but I also view it as a learning opportunity for the students. On some cases, if the student likes the job, they return the next Summer, and more often than not, if an opportunity comes up, the get hired when they finish college. I was shooting for $16-18 which is not too far below some of the entry levels in our company, although my staff is paid in mid to higher 20s, but they do have experience.
I see that the poll (8 votes by now, and no, I didn't vote) reflects this.

Pay them with opportunity and teachable moments.
They should be paying you !!

They can still go to the beach on sunny days right ?

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I voted $14-16; that's a little higher than what I pay my summer students, but your COL is higher.

Upper class students in an engineering track typically get $18-25 here, especially if they have strong testing, MATLAB or CAD skills. "Hard" science majors may have just as rigorous curriculum, but without the engineer tag they only draw $12-15. Comp Sci majors can name their price and unfortunately often don't return to school because they get paid so much without even finishing their degree.

If you treat interns as just summer workers, then pay them for the job they are doing. So you don't piss off the people who have to work with them.

If you treat interns as a summer long interview, then pay them for the job they are doing and offer some additions like training, opportunities to practice actual science-y stuff in their field of interest, and a hands on mentoring relationship with an experienced person. Consider it more of a recruitment expense.

Loyalty to employees is returned as loyalty to the employer. Summer interns WANT to learn.

Summer interns also usually NEED to make money. If there's competition for interns the good ones will go where money is significantly better. Even they will realize there's a tradeoff between what they can potentially learn and wages, but wages do matter. This idea of working for free in exchange for experience sounds good, but in reality it's not at all fair to the student.

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Pam
Summer interns also usually NEED to make money. If there's competition for interns the good ones will go where money is significantly better. Even they will realize there's a tradeoff between what they can potentially learn and wages, but wages do matter. This idea of working for free in exchange for experience sounds good, but in reality it's not at all fair to the student.

Pam- Agreed whole heartedly. The medieval practice of "Apprenticeship" is long gone, but 'unpaid intern' still exists in some industries. And what's worse.. unpaid interns rarely get mentoring or 'learn' much.

sounds like you're going about it the right way.

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I put down $14-16 as I know what engineering students here at the university are getting for internships these days. Some are getting a bit more, especially ones interning between their junior and senior years. Remember as graduates most will be going into fields where the starting pay is the equivalent of $30+ an hour.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: $0.

I think it all really boils down to what you want them to get out of it. Unfortunately, nowadays, that's how a lot of students think: "what am I going to get out of this?" ... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it. If you make it expressly clear from the get-go that they should be doing this for the experience and not the money, then you will weed out the applicants for whom the desire is mostly to get paid. You can always reward those who are willing to do it for $0 with some sort of stipend or bonus at the end... but you want to make sure the motivation (and therefore incentive) for working with you is the right one. (If they really want to do it but cannot afford to be working full-time without pay because they're not living with their parents or something similar, you can always negotiate something with them... you just want to make sure that their desire to work with you is an honest one.)

Edit: oh and someone mentioned mentorship. That's precisely what the students should be getting out of it, IMHO.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2015 12:19PM by PeterB.

SW & HW engineering interns are getting paid $30+ an hour here in SF/Valley. Not just Google / FB / Intel, but even smaller startups.

Of course, they are all looking to hire top talent for six-figure starting pay jobs.

The hard part is finding affordable shared housing (or living with the parents).

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PeterB
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: $0.

I think it all really boils down to what you want them to get out of it. Unfortunately, nowadays, that's how a lot of students think: "what am I going to get out of this?" ... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it. If you make it expressly clear from the get-go that they should be doing this for the experience and not the money, then you will weed out the applicants for whom the desire is mostly to get paid. You can always reward those who are willing to do it for $0 with some sort of stipend or bonus at the end... but you want to make sure the motivation (and therefore incentive) for working with you is the right one. (If they really want to do it but cannot afford to be working full-time without pay because they're not living with their parents or something similar, you can always negotiate something with them... you just want to make sure that their desire to work with you is an honest one.)

Edit: oh and someone mentioned mentorship. That's precisely what the students should be getting out of it, IMHO.

The feds have something to say about this. If interns perform real work, you owe them at least minimum wage. Unpaid internships are for observing and learning, not producing. S-T's interns will be doing real work.

[www.dol.gov]

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Acer

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PeterB
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: $0.

I think it all really boils down to what you want them to get out of it. Unfortunately, nowadays, that's how a lot of students think: "what am I going to get out of this?" ... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it. If you make it expressly clear from the get-go that they should be doing this for the experience and not the money, then you will weed out the applicants for whom the desire is mostly to get paid. You can always reward those who are willing to do it for $0 with some sort of stipend or bonus at the end... but you want to make sure the motivation (and therefore incentive) for working with you is the right one. (If they really want to do it but cannot afford to be working full-time without pay because they're not living with their parents or something similar, you can always negotiate something with them... you just want to make sure that their desire to work with you is an honest one.)

Edit: oh and someone mentioned mentorship. That's precisely what the students should be getting out of it, IMHO.

The feds have something to say about this. If interns perform real work, you owe them at least minimum wage. Unpaid internships are for observing and learning, not producing. S-T's interns will be doing real work.

[www.dol.gov]

Ah, true. I was thinking mostly from the perspective of an educational environment (college or university), which is what I'm primarily dealing with.

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... they just care about the bottom line, and if they feel they're not going to get something out of something, they won't bother with it.

As they should.

That would be the point of an internship, to get something out of something. Would anyone who didn't care about that even be worth hiring?

If an applicant looks at this as just a summer job, that might not be the kind of applicant one would want, if they're offering a genuine internship.

IF it's going to be an internship, there should definitely be mentoring, and that's worth money.

And *not* paying interns or summer jobbers the same as new hires should also be considered. At least, I assume it takes more or greater qualifications to get a job than to be an intern. Pay should be commensurate.

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Just caring about the bottom line leads to students who put in the minimal effort and only learn what they absolutely need to know for a test, and these students become professionals who only care about a paycheck... is that really what we want?

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