Levelling the Playing Field through Paid Internships
I run the Reading Internship Scheme (RIS) here at the University of Reading. Although I’ve not been running the scheme very long (I started about a year ago!), RIS has gone through some major changes since I’ve joined and I wanted to share our journey of how these changes came about and the impact they had on the scheme overall.
The Reading Internship Scheme
RIS is the University of Reading’s internship scheme, connecting undergraduate students with charities and SMEs through paid internships. The scheme aims to support students to find meaningful work experience and developing their employability and transferrable skills in order to compete in the graduate labour market. A lot of extracurricular work experience is unpaid, which many students are unable to undertake due to the financial burdens; all RIS internships pay the National Living Wage so it’s a good way for students to get some experience and earn a competitive salary.
The challenges
When I first joined, we had many conversations about making the scheme more accessible to our students. In particular, we wanted to ensure accessibility to students with little to no previous experience as well as students from widening participation backgrounds who may be time-poor, have low social capital, or are without familial support structures who have experience of Higher Education.
As a University of Reading alum who participated in RIS as a student way back when, I felt really passionate about levelling the playing field and making sure we’re reaching students who need our support the most. It’s undeniable that very often internships are way more accessible to students who have more experience and more fleshed out CVs. Students with less experience will often struggle to compete against students with more experience - and I remember being one of these students when first applying for a RIS internship and being politely turned down because I had no previous jobs to point to on my CV.
So, we put on our thinking caps – how do we level the playing field and make the scheme more accessible? How do we ensure students with limited experiences also stand a chance? We didn’t want to restrict the scheme; after all, it should be available to all students that feel they need the support. So, we came up with a few alterations that we believed were going to level the playing field and reduce the barriers some students may face when accessing RIS:
Replacing CV applications with a simple 3-question application form
Introducing anonymous applications
Introducing an expenses bursary in addition to salaries
I wanted to use this article to share our implementation journey and be completely truthful about how it all went…
Switching from CVs to application forms
In previous years, students applied to a RIS internship by submitting a CV and a cover letter. As a result, a lot of students that were successful in securing internships were students who had a lot of experience on their CVs and hence the scheme was not as accessible to students who didn’t have much on a CV.
As an interest-based scheme, RIS is all about helping students gain experience and explore different opportunities out there – but how do you gain experience with no experience? So, in the 22/23 scheme, we eliminated CVs and cover letters and replaced them with a simple application form focusing more on enthusiasm and relevant skills as opposed to relevant work experience.
The form asks students 3 basic questions (the final of which is optional): what relevant skills, knowledge, or experiences they have; what excites them about the internship they’re applying for; and, optionally, if there is any other relevant information they feel they want to share.
The rationale behind this simple form was to try and encourage students to try different things and apply to internships even if they don’t have any previous work experience; the application form was designed to help students talk about other relevant things such as skills, enthusiasm & interest, extracurriculars, volunteering and so on.
I really enjoyed the prompts, guidance and word count given for the application process.”
– 2023 Student
Introduction of anonymised applications
We introduced anonymous applications to eliminate any potential bias and ensure students are assessed based on the merit of their applications rather than where they’re from, what they’re studying, or what year they’re in.
We had employers in the past asking for specific degrees or year groups – and with a CV, it’s all too easy to reject someone at a glance just because they don’t fit certain criteria. So, this year has been all about educating employers on the value of diverse applicants – with so many free online resources at out fingertips, module options, and extracurriculars available, who’s to say that a marketing internship can only be done by a marketing student? Or a data internship only by a computer science student? Or that a final year student is more equipped for an internship than an enthusiastic first year?
Student applications are anonymous so employers do not see names, degree disciplines, years, previous schools, or any other personal information which may result in bias.
“I liked the fact that none of my academic qualifications were required in my application and only my experience and interest in the area mattered.”
– 2023 Student
RIS supports all undergraduate students from any degree discipline – in fact, we encourage students to undertake internships outside of their degrees to learn and develop new skills. We want to encourage employers to be open minded and embrace diverse applications.
“We also do blind recruitment, so to be able to align on this with the University was great.”
– 2023 Employer
Introduction of the RIS Expense Bursary
We introduced a £100 bursary available to home students with at least 1 widening participation marker. The idea behind this bursary was to support students with expenses at the beginning of their internships. Students receive a salary through the scheme by their employers - but when they receive their first pay check will depend on the employers’ payroll. So, we wanted to ensure the scheme is accessible to students from lower income households who may feel the financial burdens prior to receiving payment from employers. This bursary gets processed weeks before the intern actually starts, so the £100 is in the students’ account around the time they start their internship.
The USP of this bursary is that it’s automatic (at least from the students’ perspective; still very much manual from our end but it’s all about making it seem effortless, right?), so it removes the hurdles and barriers of students having to complete a lengthy application form and any stigmas that might arise from having to self-identify as ‘in need of support’. The idea was to offer that extra bit of support to try and level the playing field, but do it as discreetly as possible – eligible students will get it automatically, no questions asked.
What happened as a result?
Overall, the impact of the changes has been very positive. We were initially nervous about employer take up – after all, we introduced some drastic changes that massively challenged how they’re accustomed to receiving applications. However, it’s great to be able to say that we placed more interns than ever before and worked with more employers than ever before. Placements have gone up by 34% and number of employers placed with increased by 36% so overall the changes seem to have been embraced by employers.
For the anonymous applications in particular, we found that a lot of students will still put their degree disciplines in the body of the applications, so it’s impossible to completely anonymise. However, we need to remember that a lot of the times, a students’ most relevant experience will come from their course, so we don’t want to hinder them talking about it if they choose to; the point is that what the student discloses is up to them.
As a quick statistical summary on the effect of the changes:
Overall, applications have increased by 32%
Overall, unsubmitted drafts have decreased from 12% last year to 10% this year
Placements for students with at least one widening participation marker increased from 66% last year to 70% this year
And some interesting statistics we didn't expect regarding Part 1 students:
Applications from Part 1 students increased by 58%
Unsubmitted drafts from Part 1 students decreased from 42% to 34% from last year
Placements of Part 1 students increased from 15% last year to 23% this year
When thinking of the alterations, we never really considered the impact it would have on first year students, but the changes have definitely seemed to affect them the most. But is that surprising? Perhaps not upon reflection – our goal was to level the playing field and make the scheme more accessible to students with less experience. A student in their first year will likely have less experience than a student in their second or final year, so it’s no surprise that the uptake from first years increased.
For us particularly, the overall monitoring of the scheme has become a lot easier as a result of the anonymised applications. The fact that employers have to let us know who have been shortlisted for an interview in order to get the students’ contact details means that we have data on the status of each internship so we’re able to track and plan more efficiently which was a lot more difficult in previous years. This knowledge on internship status’ enables us to collect and analyse more data than ever before and design targeted interventions to students at each stage. We know which students are currently interviewing, who have been rejected at which stage and so on.
This knowledge allows us to better support our students too – once students are shortlisted or unsuccessful, we change their application status on the jobs board which sends them an automatic email alerting them of their application outcome. A shortlisted student receives a notification alerting them to check their emails for the employer’s email invite and book a mock interview, and unsuccessful students are notified that they’ve been unsuccessful but encouraged to book an appointment for an application review. So, students are not left in the dark but supported through each stage which was not possible in previous years.
With so much focus on DE&I across businesses and universities, it’s more important than ever before for universities to regularly evaluate their schemes and offerings to ensure they are accessible and targeting help to those who need it most. While the work for RIS is certainly not done as there’s plenty more we’d like to do, we’re really pleased with some of the changes we’ve made this year and our contribution to trying to level the playing field.
About the author
Fiorella Illes is an Mres Philosophy alum from the University of Reading. She works as part of the Employer Engagement team at the University of Reading as the Reading Internship Scheme Manager, where her role focuses on supporting undergraduate students find and secure internships with charities and SMEs.
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