How to motivate interns financially

searcher profile

July 10, 2020

by a searcher in Warszawa, Polska

Hello,


I am in the process of hiring interns. I know that interns should have most of all non-financial motivation to work, however this time I wonder how to financially motivate them.
At the beginning I would like to point out two things: (1) in the country (Poland) where I conduct search, there is no need to pay interns, (2) the city (Warsaw) in which I plan to employ interns is highly competitive when it comes to employing smart young people from the area of ​​finance.
Given the above, I am considering introducing additional financial incentives for interns. Initially, I was thinking about introducing a one-time large bonus for the entire team of interns after closing the transaction. However, given the rather distant point in time of internship and transaction and the lack of periodic reinforcement, I abandoned this idea. Currently, given the greatest involvement of interns in the pre-LOI process, I am considering a smaller bonus for each signed term-sheet for the intern who identified the entity with whom I will sign this document. In my opinion, this will make inters see a real financial benefit in a perspective of no more than a few months.

If you have any experience or observations in this area I will be grateful for your comment on that topic.

Best Michael

4
4
176
Replies
4
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Yale University in Moscow, Russia
I'm just dedicating 17% of the funds I'm raising for the search process to serve as a salary for interns that I plan to hire. While the salary would be way below the market rate, I strongly believe in paying interns something as I don't feel that unpaid interns can truly be accountable and productive. In general, I don't believe in unpaid labor, based on my experience.

The biggest bottleneck of the search is time, and I don't want to waste mine with unproductive interns. And at the end of the day, 17% is not that much.

Of course, mentoring, referrals to MBB/IB & other non-financial compensation would be provided.
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from University of Notre Dame in Boston, MA, USA
You probably know this but as a current intern, I think that most interns looking for internships in the search fund area don't expect any compensation during their search for a position; they're happy with the experience.

To compensate, you could offer additional educational resources outside of the internship program e.g. a modeling course/tutorial, office hours kind of thing, especially if most of the work will be pre-LOI; interns will be more than happy to get some technical experience with you.
commentor profile
+2 more replies.
Join the discussion