The University is launching a new on campus internship scheme, Bath Insights, for undergraduate students in years one and two, to help them gain professional skills and work experience in a safe, supportive environment. We believe offering a short but meaningful internship with a professional services department/team, will build confidence, career awareness and enable students to compete successfully for high quality work experience opportunities in subsequent years.

Why should you get involved?

The Bath Insights programme will give professional services departments and teams the chance to host an intern, providing rich and rewarding internships to our talented pool of students. Both parties will 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 will help departments play a key role in supporting and promoting key institutional agendas around student voice, community building and student experience.

How will the scheme work?

Finding work experience can be a real challenge for students in years one and two as companies and organisations often ask for evidence of prior experience and skills students have yet to acquire or develop. Bath Insights is intended to bridge 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 both the host department and colleagues from careers and employability functions.

Bath Insights is open to undergraduate students in year one and two.

All interns will be paid the Real Living Wage and will receive free on campus accommodation. (Equivalent to a grade 2/3).

Host departments can determine the format of the internship with a recommendation of at least 3 days a week on campus. Internships are full time with a 36.5-hour week.

Internships will span 6-8 weeks.

Hosting an intern

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

• scope out and define the project.
• email internships@bath.ac.uk with your proposed project by Friday 16 February 2024.
• draft a job advertisement ready to publish by 1 March 2024.
  

A generic job template is available for use, but you may choose to customise this slightly; however, please be aware this scheme is intended for students with minimal or no prior work experience and role requirements should be inclusive. We politely request that departments submit their project proposal(s) for informal screening to ensure they meet the quality standards expected. The Bath Insights initiative is not intended to absorb existing ad hoc and temporary employment opportunities.

HR will support the application process and recruitment and selection will be facilitated using Stonefish. In the interests of consistency and to negate the need for prior work experience we will issue a standard set of shortlisting and interview questions.

Planning your internship

It is important that you define the project parameters and have a clear goal for the 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; sustainability) or perhaps set the student a task to streamline processes or improve your digital reach. The internships are relatively short (6-8 weeks) so 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 internship positions as this will provide peer support for the interns and you will get the benefit of different perspectives and insights.

A few prompts and questions

• How will this project align with department and/or university objectives?
• What do you want the intern to achieve?
• Are your goals realistic given experience and timeframe?
• How will you measure success?

Project requirements

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

• Are there any additional skills that might be useful (but not essential) for the intern to have?
• What skills can you help the intern develop throughout the project?
• Avoid remote only internships as part of the purpose are to help students build confidence, develop their interpersonal communication and work with colleagues.
• Consider any training and resource requirements.
• Draft a timetable or timeline to give the intern some structure.
• Think about points of contact and support – can this be offered in person and remotely.

Application form

Host departments will use the standard recruitment form but tick the box from the drop-down menu that says ‘Bath Insights’.

Timeline