We caught up with Eropa Stein from Hyre, one of The Intern Group’s carefully selected host organisations! Eropa gave us invaluable insights into the process and advantages of hiring interns through The Intern Group.
”Finding talent from a wider talent pool is always advantageous. Diverse teams with international backgrounds add value to your business, even if recruiting internationally can be difficult. Your company gains new insights from having people from different cultures working together. As Hyre was a Canadian startup breaking into the U.S. market, it was important for us to gain insight from someone who could help us look at our product from a U.S. perspective.
Our start-up, Hyre, is an all-in-one employee scheduling tool that includes the added bonus of connecting shift managers to a wide resource pool of qualified temp staff to fill gaps in their schedules. We intimately understand how painful and time-consuming the recruiting process can be. The time spent recruiting for a small team can be taxing, especially when the team is already working at capacity. So, when we needed to find someone to help us understand our American counterparts, we decided to try finding talent through The Intern Group. The Intern Group offered to connect us with international interns who would be willing to join our start-up for a period of time. We are happy to say that the organization greatly simplified the task of finding international talent. They took over part of the screening process and handed us a curated list of talent who had HR specific interests along with international perspectives. Our team could rest assured that we’d find a suitable candidate who could contribute in a novel way to our company.
Our experience with our first intern from The Intern Group
The intern that we brought on was from New York and her perspective helped us target clients from the United States. Even though Canada and the U.S. are neighbours, there are big differences in priorities that prospective clients from each country have. Our messaging, value proposition, and positioning had to be adjusted to account for this. Our intern was an invaluable asset when it came to supporting our expansion to the States. She helped us complete a comprehensive competitive analysis, which allowed us to hone in on what we offer that competitors don’t. She also assisted in analyzing our competitors’ customer experience This research informed our own decisions when it came to implementing better user experience practices. The important work of focusing our product to work for our American target audience was fast tracked with her help.
While offboarding our intern, we were pleased to hear that she learned a lot from her experience with Hyre. The international internship helped her gain a better understanding of what she wanted from her career. She emphasized that, while education is important, real-world experience is priceless. Our team is still in touch with her today and love hearing about her recent successes.
I would highly recommend The Intern Group to other host organizations and interns who are looking to gain valuable experience. Our interview process was much more streamlined through The Intern Group. Everybody was vetted beforehand, so there were no hard misses. Overall, it was a pleasant and valuable experience working with The Intern Group and our intern. ”