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Virtual Internships: How to Achieve Great Conversion Numbers
Description:
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations canceled or shortened their 2020 internship programs. Cigna made the decision to quickly pivot and offer our 221 interns a completely virtual summer internship. Initially, we were unsure how conducting the internship program on a virtual platform would impact our conversion rate. We were thoughtful about implementing a strategy that we hoped would mitigate some risk introduced by the unique circumstances. The number of conversion offers accepted by our 2020 intern cohort indicates that our strategy was successful. Overall, 97 out of 110, or 88%, of the conversion offers Cigna extended were accepted. That is a number we are very proud of and we would like to share the elements of our strategy that we think contributed to our success. 1. Clear and Consistent Communication The goal of our intern communication and engagement strategy was to ensure all interns felt connected to Cigna’s mission, values and organizational culture from their first interaction with us, throughout their internship and beyond. Before their internship started we sent customized welcome boxes that included a welcome note from out Chief Human Resources Officer. We held pre-engagement events via WebEx. The intent of these sessions was to ease the interns' transition into to the workplace and provide a support system. Once the interns joined the program, they were kept abreast of updates and events through an intern newsletter, ensuring that they were provided with consistent messaging throughout the summer. These newsletters also included articles on initiatives that were occurring within the company, employee spotlights and location highlights. We also made sure to include our interns in the enterprise-wide diversity strategy through engagement with our Enterprise Resource Groups, diverse guest speakers and DE&I focused professional development sessions. Again, helping to make connections and build a sense of community. At the conclusion of the internship , we deployed a robust keep-warm strategy that included multiple touch points from our team as well as intern leaders. The keep-warm strategy let the students know they were still part of the Cigna community, even when they were not working directly with us. 2. Leader Engagement Intern leaders played a crucial role in the overall conversion strategy. It was important to gain their buy-in early on. We encouraged leaders within the organization to include interns when reviewing their overall talent strategy and to ensure there was an opportunity to make a conversion offer upon successful completion of the internship program. We also hosted bi-weekly intern leader meetings leading up to, and throughout the program, to ensure leaders felt prepared to provide a meaningful experience for their interns. Through these exchanges of information we found ourselves closely aligned with one another and better able to provide an exceptional experience for all interns, regardless of function or department. 3. Tools and Resources An important part of the conversion strategy was providing tools and resources to both interns and intern leaders to ensure they had the information they needed to be successful in their roles. Our intern orientation and onboarding consisted of learning modules, guest speakers, technology walk-throughs, etc. to make sure they had the tools to start contributing when they joined their teams for the summer. Onboarding sets the tone for the summer and creates an energy around starting that gets interns and their managers excited about the program. It also provides interns with the knowledge of the business as well as visibility into the connections they may find useful over the summer. For the intern managers, the our team created a resource page on our intranet called the QUAD, outlining the functions of our team and providing a library of helpful documents and links. The QUAD serves as a one stop shop for leaders in regards to everything related to Early Careers. In addition, we developed an intern manager toolkit that was distributed and reviewed in detail during the bi-weekly leader meetings.
Audience:
University Relations & Recruiting
Level:
Intermediate
Track:
Sourcing, Recruiting & Talent Acquisition
Type:
SMARTtalk
Main Speaker:
Kathleen Idehara, Cigna
Additional Speakers: