Enterprise Nation

If you have a project you think would be a perfect job for a talented student, then stay glued to the site this week as we’re looking at the topic of hiring student interns/volunteers/placements in your home business. We start with a round-up of five useful sites.

What are you looking for?

The first step is to outline the type of person you’re looking for and confirm what you’d like them to do. This is a standard job description that you would use for any new hire. Once this is done, head to the sites that can help find your perfect candidate.

Where to look

Here are the top sites we’re aware of. Please post in the comments or forum if you have other suggestions.

Enternships.com

This site went live just last week. It’s been created to place students in entrepreneurial businesses and came out of the personal experience of Rajeeb Dey, who was on the receiving end of numerous recruitment requests when heading up the Entrepreneurs Club at Oxford University. You can view an interview with the founding team here.

• Enternships.com

Shell Step

Shell Step refers to itself as ‘the UK's leading nationwide project-based work placement programme’ – bringing together students and graduates who want to gain valuable experience on real work placements with companies who want an injection of fresh ideas, talent and enthusiasm to inspire and build their business.

To show just how valuable students can be, Shell Step has a press release on Chris Haigh, a student from Warwick University, who developed a product during his summer work placement that won the host company new business worth up to £2 million. Bet he’s in high demand!

• Shell Step 

Ratemyplacement.com

We don’t hide our love for this business on Enterprise Nation. Founded by three graduates from Loughborough University, the company goes from strength to strength in terms of attracting more students who rate their work placements and advertising from corporates who want to attract the cream of the graduate crop. We’ll have an interview with one of the founders later this week, complete with advice on how to make the most of a student placement in your business.

• RateMyPlacement.com

Studentgems

As it says right at the top of their site, the purpose of this business is:

Businesses and individuals - find students and get jobs done
Students - use your skills to earn money

We’re hoping to get a comment from the team on some of their top projects and how home businesses have benefited from bringing students in-house.

• Studentgems.com

Gumtree.com

You wouldn’t ordinarily think of classified sites as places to go to find student interns but it was to Gumtree.com that Julie Hall of Women Unlimited turned when she was looking for two student volunteers. She’s successfully found them and we’ll be reporting on her experiences later in the week too!

• Gumtree.com

So lots more coming up … throughout the week, we’ll talk to businesses who have taken on students and ask how they fared as well as talking to the people behind the student websites and asking for their advice on how to make the perfect home business/student match. – Emma Jones