InternCLE podcast Episode: 013 Swagelok – Brittany Cirino

Hire about 75 interns a year – get great work out of the interns and it serves as a pipeline for full time positions.  They also have a 3-year rotational program at Swagelok that they fill almost exclusively from previous interns. 

Two internship programs:

·         Summer internship program – 12 weeks during the summer

·         Engineering co-op program – year-round rotations

Current employees bring referrals to Brittany candidates for the internship.  Employees get a referral bonus. 

Swagelok interns are freshman, sophomores and juniors.  The large bulk of summer interns are engineers.  They also hire supply chain, HR, IT, communications and finance. 

Swagelok works to have the internship program pay for itself.  Brittany works with the departments to identify the value of the work being done by the engineering students.  For example, a process engineering intern that does a time study and helps to eliminate 1 hour of a process – they can quantify the value of the savings.  Perhaps a $10,000 savings.  On the business side, they save on the hours and dollars compared to a full time hire or outsourcing versus using an intern. 

Challenges – sometimes it’s like “herding sheep” when you have so many interns and intern supervisors.  Swagelok is looking critically on whether they are getting the top talent in their intern candidates – they are involving the leadership team in the evaluation of candidates and are working to roll out a new assessment process soon.  

Brittany loves to be able to see previous interns 5 years later as a manager and having success in the organization, following their journey.  The company gets a great injection of energy when the interns show up.