Employers share the five ‘must have’ competencies when selecting interns
When employers are recruiting students for internships, there are five “must have” competencies they’re seeking, according to a new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). In the three years since NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey first asked employers about the competencies that are most important to them when selecting students for their internship programs, these five essential competencies have been tops on employers’ lists.
(See Figure 1)
Those five “must haves” according to NACE are:
- Information processing;
- Teamwork;
- Planning/prioritizing;
- Decision making/problem solving; and
- Verbal communication.
In 2017, nearly all of the employers responding to the survey see information processing and teamwork as critical components of an internship recruit’s appeal. Similarly, nearly 90 percent of respondents find planning/prioritizing, decision making/problem solving, and verbal communication as very or extremely important.
Among the moderately important competencies again this year are data analysis, computer skills, and job-specific technical skills/knowledge. The percentage of employers that deemed these competencies very or extremely important ranged between 51 and 77 percent.
Figure 1: Preferred competencies for intern hires
Source: 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey, National Association of Colleges and Employers. In this analysis, a criterion was defined as “important” if a respondent who used that criterion considered it either “very important” (4) or “extremely important” (5) on a 5-point scale.
NACE’s 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey was conducted from November 21, 2016, to February 17, 2017, among NACE employer members; there were 276 respondents, representing 26.4 percent of all eligible respondents. An executive summary from the 2017 Internship & Co-op Survey report is available at www.naceweb.org/store/2017/internship-and-co-op-report/.
Source: NACE / Written by: Ace News Today Staff
