Internship Programs require as many efforts as rest of the employee development plans in a company. Companies are growing and want to hire batches of interns to achieve their business goals. It also requires specific team members of the company to plan out, coordinate, mentor and train those interns. To map out the complete internship program and execute it as per requirement is a task in itself, and cannot be taken lightly.
To run this program smoothly, there is a designated team of people. That team may have 2 or more than 2 members in it, based on the type of hiring done and how large the organization is. In this article we will tell you about the key contributors to run an internship program in any company.

1.    Recruiter:
He is the guy who opens the position and through various steps of recruitment, fulfils it. He is one of the key people involved in starting the program. Even though he is not directly involved in the mentorship of the hired interns, it's him who searches for the candidates through various mediums. He screens the best ones, and forwards them for further interviews.

2.    Onboarding Team:
Every company has people who take care of employee onboarding by following up with candidates who have been selected. They keep in contact with the candidates from the moment they receive offer till the time of their joining. They do the following:

• Welcoming them to the team,
• Creating their schedule,
• Intimating them of the processes of the company,
• Showing the company culture,
• Letting them understand the working of an organisation,

All this is commenced and executed by the onboarding team and hence they play an important role in effectively running the internship program.

3.    Coordinator:
A team member is assigned to coordinate the complete internship program. He is usually a part of HR team and is known as the Internship Coordinator. He brings together the other direct and indirect contributors of the program. He discusses the requirement with managers and recruiters, creates the interview process and panel, overviews the feedback, and finalises the hirings.

4.    Supervisors:
The internship coordinator has a team of people who under him supervise the little things constituting an internship program. In case of interns in various departments, there are supervisors for each of them. They manage the interns for that particular department of the company. They are responsible for managing the daily activities, training sessions, evaluating their performance periodically and create the progress reports.

5.    Trainers:
To run an internship program successfully, trainers play an important role. They coach the interns, teach them about the domain and project handling, make them ready to be absorbed by various teams at a later stage. Trainers work in collaboration with the team managers and create small projects as assignments for interns to work on. That’s how their productivity is evaluated.

As mentioned above, these people may vary from company to company. If it’s a large company, there may be many supervisors, but in case of small companies, the coordinator and supervisor may be the same person.
Internship Program definitely needs an individual with experience to manage and run such programs, but it's not necessary that there has to be a huge team for the same. A seasoned professional may also play multiple roles to work on such initiatives.