Internship programs can serve as a key tactic for measuring and increasing your organization’s brand awareness. Studies show that candidates are 40% more likely to apply for a job if they recognize the company’s brand. Internship programs can be a vital part of strengthening your organization’s brand awareness. Your interns’ perceptions of your brand are key insights into how well your potential future employees understand your organization and its offerings. Former interns can also serve as brand ambassadors to future interns on their campuses.
Symba has created a workbook geared towards internship program managers to help measure and optimize your program’s experience, ROI, diversity efforts, and brand awareness. In Chapter 4 of this workbook, we help you measure and improve your brand awareness. This chapter includes ideas on how to build brand awareness amongst your interns, metrics to measure brand awareness, a sample brand awareness survey, and much more. Here is a sneak peek into the chapter!
1. Ideas to build brand awareness
Many Gen Zers are entering the workforce and applying for internships, so try to approach your online presence in a way that matters to them. Gen Z candidates care about social media and are tech-savvy, meaning that part of their internship activities should involve that interest. One way to engage interns is to organize social and professional development activities including photo-ops so that interns share their experiences and tag the organization's social media pages. #DoItForTheGram 😉
Another idea is to encourage interns to write posts or articles about their internship experience with your organization. These articles can be shared on the company blog and linked to the intern’s LinkedIn profile, which is valuable exposure for their professional portfolio and your brand awareness.
You can find more such ideas by accessing our workbook at the end of this article!
2. Metrics to track brand awareness
Use surveys to track whether your interns' understanding and perception of your brand, products, and services are accurate and improving over time. Promote honesty in their responses by reassuring them that answers are anonymous and will not affect their standing in the organization. Also, consider adding open-ended questions to gain their personal opinion on what could be improved.
Another way to measure brand awareness amongst your interns is by tracking and comparing Likert scores of cohorts over the years to see if your brand awareness is increasing through your internship program engagement and efforts. Look out for a sample brand awareness survey in this chapter!
Now that you have all the metrics and templates you need to calculate brand awareness of your internship program, go ahead and make your program more attractive to upcoming intern cohorts. Access the chapter on brand awareness right away!
