Yet without such experience, it can be difficult to access the careers they wish to pursue. Without these opportunities, they will find it impossible to enter let alone progress in their chosen field. It is essentially a ‘catch 22’ situation.
Working as an intern offers a young person the way out of this bind; an opportunity to ‘live and breathe’ the role, gain invaluable training and start building relationships in their chosen field. It also enables them to clearly visualise a possible future career path within their chosen profession or industry sector.
Many large businesses create and maintain ongoing internship programmes, but many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), may feel they do not have the necessary resources to take on young people as interns and give them sufficient training and attention to make it a truly worthwhile experience for them.
Yet SMEs, which make up 90% of the financial services sector, have the agility to create jobs to service a growing client-base. Taking on interns can be a wonderful way for them to manage the risk this involves by ‘trialling’ prospective talent first and gaining insight into the ways in which the interns operate within their organisations, before committing themselves to hiring someone on a permanent basis.
It is precisely to meet the needs of such smaller firms that the Financial Skills Partnership (FSP) set up its new Graduate Foundation College last year, which has pre-trained its first intake of unemployed graduates for ten weeks, giving them the basic knowledge and skills equipping them to join an SME financial advisory practice.
The training is by face-to-face workshops, e-learning and exam preparation training and includes taking a financial Services, regulation and ethics module. Graduates are then placed with small and medium-sized practices for a six month period of paid industry experience. Companies participating gain by increasing the probability of employing fresh talent into their businesses.
Given the current state of the financial services industry, internships have never been more crucial nor offered greater potential benefit to employers and this scheme comes with the greatest possible level of support. For example, Redland’s ‘insight’ portal is made available to participating firms to allow them to record the progress of the intern.
Through its online internship toolkit, due to be added shortly to the FSP’s other online resource offerings for its members, the FSP makes available all the resources and guidance firms new to this process may need to ensure that both the business and the intern achieve a highly beneficial outcome.
The toolkit is divided into sections which include best practice guidelines, types of tasks that employers can assign to interns and templates that can be downloaded to help businesses plan their internships.
Poorly planned internship programmes can suffer from a lack of structure, variety and stimulating tasks for interns to perform independently - all of which can lead to boredom and frustration in capable young people looking for opportunities to develop their potential. Some will become disillusioned and decide to change course and pursue other career paths.
The internship toolkit provides companies with guidelines on how to create meaningful opportunities in a cost-effective way. Employers that offer a well thought out, high quality internship programme can rest assured that they will get back out what they put in - notably, interns that match their business needs and can work in line with their ethos.
Internships also help staff improve their training and interpersonal skills through interaction with young people who have never done the job before.
These are all benefits accruing to the firm whether the intern stays on after the end of the internship or not. Additionally, if both intern and employer wish it, the employer stands to benefit from a highly motivated young person who is already familiar with their services, client base and ways of working joining their firm on a more permanent basis. A considerable amount of the risk and uncertainty usually associated with hiring new staff will have been taken out of that decision.
Hundreds of businesses are currently being given the opportunity to train up experienced candidates and immerse them in their culture, ethos and ways of doing business. They are also being given the opportunity of selecting the best candidates early. The FSP welcomes applications from employers in any of the GFC’s seven centres of operation and is currently especially interested to hear from employers in Birmingham and Edinburgh.
For young people, whether hired permanently or not, an internship is of great benefit. It gives them insight into what is expected of them in a workplace environment typical of their chosen industry sector and of the world of work in general.
Furthermore, internships help them to improve their employability skills. Given the current employment prospects for young people, the development of such skills can only assist them in getting closer to securing their dream jobs.
The Federation of Small Businesses recently reported that the majority of small business owners find young people are not business aware and do not have the skills they require in the workplace. The GFC addresses precisely this gap by offering a structured programme giving young people the opportunity to acquire skills that will help ready them to start work in an SME in the financial services sector.
The FSP’s internship toolkit is just one of a number of online toolkits offered to its small partner members which currently includes ones on apprenticeships, work experience, and training & competence. Currently under development is one on supervision to support training and competence and another on finance.
The internship toolkit was created specifically for companies participating in the GFC and like the others was developed with maximum practicality in mind. Firms participating in the GFC receive a year’s free membership giving access to all the other toolkits as well, a saving of up to £350.
In the financial and professional services sectors, employers are becoming more interested in driving the skills agenda, given that there are skills shortages and losses of talent, for example by reason of IFAs retiring.
The need to appeal to the next generation and have a talent pipeline for the future has never been more urgent. It is hoped that with the support of the toolkit, more SMEs will decide to take up the offer of participating in the Graduate Foundation College, offering graduates internships that will be of high quality and beneficial to both the company and the intern, and that this will add to the industry’s pipeline of talented young people ‘tooled-up’ and ready for the world of work in the sector.
As with other relevant, employer-led skills initiatives, internships are an all-round ‘win-win’ for all those involved.
Liz Field is chief executive of the Financial Skills Partnership
