Learn how Smith+Nephew, a medical technology company, has leveraged the Parker Dewey platform to knock down barriers between their recruiting team and the untapped talents of a diverse candidate pool.
Micro-Internships are short-term, paid, professional projects (typically 10-40 hours) that allow companies to assess and engage early-career talent before making a long-term hiring decision.
These projects involve work similar to what you'd give an intern or entry-level hire—without requiring sensitive data access.
Parker Dewey connects you with candidates through real-world work and powerful candidate intelligence. Easily scale your internship program, strengthen your talent pipeline, and improve full-time conversion rates—all while creating a more inclusive hiring process.
A recruiting platform open to all employers to engage with early-career talent through Micro-Internships.
Comprehensive Candidate Profiles – Access short-answer responses, resumes, and work samples.
Real-Work Assessments – Evaluate skills beyond a resume through Micro-Internships.
Broad Talent Pool – Connect with students and grads from 5,900+ schools.
Project Template Library – Start from 300+ customizable project templates.
Parker Dewey+ enhances the core Parker Dewey platform with advanced candidate insights and tools for smarter hiring.
Candidate Analytics – Filter by skills, location, and school data.
Performance Analytics – Gain insights on diversity, location, and school data.
Data Export – Quickly upload candidate data into existing systems.
Hiring Manager Feedback – Help your team make informed decisions with structured candidate evaluations.
Trane Technologies expanded its hiring pipeline beyond traditional recruiting channels by leveraging Micro-Internships to access, assess, and hire motivated early-career talent.
Trane Technologies needed to expand its early-career hiring pipeline beyond traditional channels. With 500 annual early-career hires, they sought a way to engage more candidates, build brand awareness, and assess skills beyond the traditional hiring playbook.
By leveraging 25+ Micro-Internships, Trane Technologies accessed a broader, more diverse talent pool while getting valuable project support. Candidates worked on real-world projects like competitive research, candidate sourcing, and campus ambassador roles.
Trane converted Micro-Interns into full-time hires, turning brand awareness into placements. The program saved a week's worth of time per project and led to multiple hires from previously untapped universities.
Completed, leading to full-time hires.
Freeing up employees for higher-priority work.
Led to hires from previously untapped universities.
Explore the many ways Micro-Internships can support your hiring goals.
Engage candidates before recruiting season begins, and on demand as needed.
Expand your recruiting focus and connect with students from specific geographies and academic institutions.
Offer work experiences during academic breaks and outside of traditional summer cycles.
See candidates’ skills, strengths, and growth areas in action before extending an offer.
Engage candidates for specialized roles or industries with lower visibility to build a stronger talent pipeline.
Engage students earlier in their academic journey to build long-term relationships.
Use tab or arrow keys to navigate the FAQ. Press enter or space to expand questions and reveal answers.
A Micro-Internship is a short-term project that can typically be completed within 10-40 hours and is due within a few days to a few weeks. These projects require no on-boarding and can be completed by a college student with minimal instruction. These are important but low-risk tasks that aren’t the best use of your time.
You set the price for each project. All projects are fixed-fee, and most are listed between $200-$600, typically implying $15-20/hour based on estimated hours of work. 90% of this fee goes directly to the intern, and there are no obligations or other fees even if the relationship turns into an internship or full-time role.
In short, it’s easy as Parker Dewey handles it all. No HR burdens. No conversion fees. No questions about ownership or worries about confidentiality.
Employment: Micro-Interns are not your employees, contractors, interns, temps, or freelancers. Similar to working with a consulting firm or any other service provider, you are engaging Parker Dewey LLC to complete the assignment, and each individual you select is a contractor or employee of Parker Dewey. You can still directly interact with them as much or little as you would like, and always have the opportunity to hire them directly without any costs or fees.
Liability: We’re mission-driven and believe in the power of creating opportunities. That said, we take on all the liability. Not happy with the work product? We’ll give you a full refund or find an alternate Career Launcher.
Work Product: All work product is owned by you.
Confidentiality: While most projects involve public-facing information of a non-sensitive nature, both Parker Dewey and all Career Launchers sign strict NDAs to protect your information. In addition to the standard provisions, the students understand that they are risking their academic transcript or expulsion for any violation of confidentiality.
Background Checks: Given the short-term nature and structure of these assignments, we do not conduct background checks. While companies are always welcome to conduct a background check directly, the nature of the specific assignments and lack of a direct relationship with the individual who is selected has caused most organizations to defer the background check until after a Micro-Internship is completed and a student is offered a traditional internship or full-time role.
Micro-Internships are not meant to replace traditional internship programs but rather complement and even supplement them. Due to their short-term nature, Micro-Internships can be used year-round to find on-demand project support while simultaneously allowing you to engage and evaluate potential talent.
Micro-Internships can be either on-site or virtual, depending on the specific requirements of the project. We typically suggest remote, as this provides more flexibility and accessibility.
The project manager will be a member of your team, whether that be a hiring manager, team lead, or another employee. At the start of the project, they will clarify specific expectations and share the information/materials necessary for your Micro-Intern to complete the project. From there, they can engage the student in whatever way works best, whether that be email, Zoom, etc. Because Career Launchers on Parker Dewey have core skills and are highly motivated to exceed expectations, they require minimal management.
Our Client Program team is dedicated to making sure that it's as easy to hire one Micro-Intern as it is to hire 100. Contact us to learn more about Micro-Internship programs.