What is Interview Day and the Matching Process?
Program Realities
One thing we learned very quickly in running a diverse and rapidly growing Academic Internship Program was that the traditional method of sending student resumes to potential employers and letting the employers and students connect without much structure would not work for us. With the diversity of the program and the very short timeframe we have to help to very large number of students secure internships, we needed to develop a streamlined system with a bit more organization.
Service To Employing Organizations
The system we have developed reduces the administrative effort for the employing organization and streamlines the process of securing an intern:
- You are able to conduct all of your interviews in a single day, and the process of going back and forth directly with students regarding scheduling interviews and negotiating offers following interviews is eliminated.
- Students accept and decline offers through a structured process, which prevents students from delaying decisions that sometimes leave employers without an intern.
We offer a system that provides you with the same level of control and influence over your intern interview/offer process as the traditional method, but with a greatly reduced amount of administrative effort required on your part!
Where Did This Process Come From?
If you have ever applied for medical school, rushed a sorority or fraternity, or even particpated in an internship program at another college or university, our process may seem very familiar to you. In determining how we wanted to manage our program, we benchmarked against other organizations and programs trying to accomplish similar goals. As a result, we created a system that allows students and employers to retain control in their decision making throughout the search process, while also allowing us to faciliate that decision making in a streamlined fashion.
How Does It Work?
1. Posting Your Position For Students to Review
Once you have met with a Manager of Academic Internships and been approved as a UC internship employer, you will get an account in our online internship system. As soon as you get this account, you will want to post your internship opportunities to ensure maximum exposure to students seeking internships.
This is the first filter to help you conduct the most efficient and focused search possible; you control exactly what students see regarding your position, so you can be as specific or general as you like, which will greatly influence the number and variety of candidates you'll review later in the process.
2. Student Review
At the beginning of each term, the group of students in the classrom portion of the Academic Internship Program (the group seeking internships for the following term) will begin to review all the posted positions and express a level of interest in each. They will also upload their resume, and potentially other credentials such as cover letters, portoflios, or a letter of recommendation to the system.
This is the second filter; you will never see students who do not review your position, or who indicate that they are not interested in it.
3. Employer Review
Once students have had time to review all posted positions, we will invite you to log into the system to review the credentials of students who have expressed interest in your position(s). After reviewing the student's credentials, you'll build a Preferred Student List in the system. This is a rank ordered list of all the students who expressed interest in each of your positions that you would be willing to interview.
This is the third filter; only students you add to your Preferred Student List may appear on your interview slate for the Interview Day event.
4. Interview Day Interview Slate Creation
Once all employers have completed building thier Preferred Student Lists, we take the preference lists of the students and the preference lists of the employers and build interview slates based on the mutual expression of interest by both parties. Your slate will be comprised of the students for which there was the highest level of mutual interest between you and the students. For example, if a student ranks your position as the one in which they were most interested in based on your posting in the internship system and you put them at the top of your Preferred Student List for that position, then that student is guaranteed to appear on your interview slate.
This is the fourth filter; your interview slate is made up of the students for which there was the highest level of mutual interest between you and them.
5. Interview Day
Interview Day itself is one of the most exciting days of the term for everyone involved in the Academic Internship Program! On this day, all employers who are seeking interns and all interns seeking internships come together for a single day of intense interviewing. We take care of all the logistics of the day, all you will need to do is come to campus ready to meet the best and brightest potential interns UC has to offer! This format allows you to not worry about scheduling multiple students at your location over a period of time, but instead allows you to complete all of your interviewing activity in a single half or full day, and not have to bother with any of the coordination.
This is the fifth filter; just as you would in a traditional process, you have the opportunity to sit down across the table from each candidate and conduct an interview for your internship position.
6. Mutual Ranking Following Interview Day
At the conclusion of Inteview Day, before either a student or employer leaves the Interview Day event, each will submit a Preference Sheet to the internship program personnel. This Preference Sheet will be a rank ordered list of the interviews they conducted, in order of preference, with any matches that are not good fits eliminated. So, from the employer perspective, the Preference Sheet will be a rank ordered list of the students you would be comfortable extending an offer to in your order of preference, omitting any student to whom you would not be comfortable extending an offer. Students submit a similar preference sheet regarding all positions for which they interviewed.
This step includes the sixth and seventh filters; both you and the students express a level of interest in each other, and both parties have the opportunity to say, definitively, "no" to any particular possible match.
7. Final Matching
Once Interview Day is complete, the personnel of the Academic Internship Program take all the Preferences Sheets completed at Interview Day and complete the final matching process. This process is very similar to the process of building the slates for Interview Day, in that it is based on the highest level of mutual match between a student and a position. For example, if a student puts your position as their #1 choice and you list them as your #1 choice for that position, then that student will be matched as your intern for the next term.
Once matches have been completed, we perform a final confirmation of the match with you. As soon as we receive your final approval we connect you directly with the student to finalize the logistical details of their internship with you.
This is the eigth filter; your final match will be the student for which there is the highest level of mutual interest between you and them.
Does This Mean I Have To Take An Intern?
There is no commitment to hire an intern from the Academic Internship Program until you submit your Preference Sheet following Interview Day. If you submit that Preference Sheet, and it indicates that you are willing to extend an offer to one or more of the students you interviewed, then we will include your position in the matching process, and very likely match you with a student. We ask all of our employers to take the Preference Sheets very seriously, as if we match a student to your position based on the matching process, and later you are not able to provide the opportunity for that student it is unlikely that we will be able to place that student elsewhere, as we hope that the vast majority, if not all, of our positions get filled on Interview Day.
You have two opportunities to decide there is not a good fit available from our program for your position:
- You do not have to add any students to your Preferred Student List in the intership system (step 3 above). If this is the case, you would not participate in Interview Day.
- If you do initially include one or more students on your Preferred Student List, but after attending Interview Day and completing your interviews do not feel there is a strong fit available you can simply indicate that you are not comfortable extending offers to any of the students you interviewed on your Preference Sheet and we will not include your position in the matching process.
Does This Reduce My Level Of Influence Over The Intern I Get?
We truly believe that our process provides you with the same of control and choice in who your intern will be as the traditional process. We encourage reading the process overview section above, focusing especially on the italicized statements after each process step, which emphasize how the same filtering that takes place in the traditional process takes place in our process.
What Other Options Are There?
We very much prefer that all employers particpate in the process we have outlined above. The overwhleming feedback we get from our employers is that they truly appreciate the greatly reduced workload following our process provides for them.
We do understand though that there are situations where an organization might not be able to or prefer to not participate in the process we have created, either for a single term or on an ongoing basis. If this is the case, the personnel of the Academic Internship Program will absolutely work with you to accomodate your particular situation whenever possible.