Utilities Tend to Hire More Interns Full-Time

From the Wall Street Journal | Sept 20, 2010

When looking for an internship, a job at a utility, architecture or
construction firm may be more likely to turn into a full-time gig.

Employers in the utility industry, on average, said 65% of their
entry-level hires had been undergraduate interns at their company,
according to a Wall Street Journal study.

At architecture and construction firms, about half of entry-level
hires were undergraduate interns, on average.

The study surveyed 479 companies, nonprofits and
government agencies that recruit new college graduates.

Recruiters said utilities, architecture and construction firms have
lots of jobs, such as engineers and construction project managers, that
require years of training and technical expertise. So companies like to
train employees from a young age, often using their intern pools as a
starting point.

Turner Construction Co., a construction management,
services and general contractor firm based in New York, hired 233 people
into entry-level jobs in the U.S. between September 2009 and August
2010, says Katie Igoe, national recruiting manager at Turner.
Eighty-four of them had been interns during that same time period, she
says.

Among former interns, the "retention rate is a lot higher than those
who have not interned with us, and they are stronger performers," Ms.
Igoe added.

Nonprofits said only 22% of their entry-level hires had been
undergraduate interns at their organization. They don't often have the
money to run big internship programs, and so tend not to use them as a
major source of hires.

Some
organizations also prefer interns that have already graduated from
college, lowering their undergraduate intern hiring rates. At Brother's
Brother Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based international charity that
provides books and medical supplies to over 140 countries, interns are
mostly recent college graduates who have experience overseas.

Transportation firms—including auto makers and airlines—said only 26%
of entry-level hires had been interns. Some in the industry said
internship experience alone isn't enough to win a full-time job, even at
the entry level. Instead they sometimes prefer to hire those who have
already graduated and had some post-grad experience. The bad economy has
also led some hard-hit firms to cut or shrink internship programs.

—Alexandra Cheney