How to motivate interns financially
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
from Yale University in Moscow, Russia
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.
from University of Notre Dame in Boston, MA, USA
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.