The University’s successful on campus internship scheme, Bath Insights, is returning in 2024-25. It is a programme designed for undergraduate students in years one and two, to help them gain professional skills and work experience in a safe, supportive environment. Offering short but meaningful internships with professional services departments/teams builds confidence and career awareness, and enables students to compete successfully for high quality work experience opportunities in subsequent years.

Why you should get involved

The Bath Insights programme gives professional services departments and teams the chance to host an intern, providing rich and rewarding experiences to our talented pool of students. Both parties gain, with host departments able to harness student creativity, ingenuity and energy, and students able to develop workplace skills and the chance to contribute blue skies thinking and practical solutions to genuine projects.

This initiative helps departments play a key role in advancing critical institutional agendas around student voice, community building and student experience.

How the programme works

Finding work experience can be a real challenge for students in years one and two as organisations often ask for evidence of prior experience and skills they have yet to acquire. Bath Insights bridges this gap by offering students the opportunity to work on a real project, developing a range of sought-after skills and competencies, whilst being supported by their host department as well as colleagues from Careers.

Bath Insights is open to most undergraduate students in years one and two. (Students who are studying a distance learning course or visiting the University on an exchange are not eligible to apply.)

All interns are paid the Real Living Wage and receive free on campus accommodation. (Equivalent to a grade 2.) The host department will need to fund the internship from their budget.

Host departments determine the format of the internship with a recommendation of at least 3 days a week on campus. Internships are full time (a 36.5-hour week) and last 8 weeks.

Hosting an intern

If your department is interested in participating, you will need to:

1. Submit an Expression of Interest Form
2. Meet with the Internships Team to discuss your internship opportunity in more detail
3. Scope out and define the project your intern(s) will work on while they are working in your department

If you would like to, you can participate in the Assessment Centres where we will meet candidates and match them to internship opportunities.

A generic job template has been written, as students will apply to the programme and not individual internship opportunities. The programme is intended for students with minimal or no prior work experience and role requirements are therefore inclusive.

The programme is not intended to absorb existing ad hoc and temporary employment opportunities, and instead is designed to bring valuable student insight to meaningful projects. We therefore politely request that departments submit their project proposal(s) for informal screening to ensure the expected quality standards are met.

HR will support the application process and recruitment, and selection will be facilitated using Stonefish. In the interests of consistency we will use a standard set of shortlisting and interview questions and all shortlisted candidates will attend Assessment Centres. Successful candidates will then be matched to the most appropriate internship opportunity.

Planning your internship

It is important that you define the project parameters and have a clear goal for your intern(s) to work towards. You could take a thematic approach, using one of the key institutional agendas to shape the project (e.g., student voice or sustainability) or perhaps set your intern(s) a task to streamline processes or improve your digital reach. As the internships are relatively short (8 weeks), it might be easier and more manageable to offer one project, rather than spread across different areas or functions.

If you have sufficient budget it would work well to offer two internships as this provides peer support for the interns and you get the benefit of different perspectives and insights.

Key considerations

Remember Bath Insights internships are intended for students with minimal or no prior work experience – please factor this into your project outline and requirements.

You should think carefully about:

• what additional skills it might be useful (but not essential) for the intern to have
• what skills can you help your interns develop throughout the project
• how you will support your intern(s) if and when they are office-based and you are working remotely. We will not move forward with remote-only internships, as part of the purpose is to help students build confidence, develop their interpersonal communication and work with colleagues in a professional environment
• any training and resource requirements
• a timetable / timeline for the internship, to give your intern(s) some structure
• points of contact and support across the department, and how much time you will need to invest in supporting the development of your intern(s). The expectation is that managers will provide a minimum of a daily check-in via Teams if you’re not in the office together, and a 1:1 once a week

Some important questions to consider are:

• how will this project align with department and/or university objectives?
• what do you want the intern to achieve?
• are your goals realistic given the intern’s experience and timeframe?
• how will you measure success?

Timeline

Please note that all internships must start and end on these dates. Please consider this carefully, as if you are not able to commit to the full internship period, starting on 2 June 2025, you will not be able to offer a placement this year.

More information and further reading

The generic job description for all Bath Insights internships

Watch a conversation about the Bath Insights programme between Julian Chaudhuri (PVC Education), Helen Stringer (Director of Employability and Student Success), and two students who completed an internship last year

This page on the website describes the programme to students.

This page on the website describes Micro Internships, a separate programme offering students 1 week internships in local businesses.