Hiring graduate and intern skills can be a great benefit to a company, while also positively influencing the next generation of leaders and skilled workers. Knowing how to work out a fair intern or graduate salary is key to this process and will assist as you attract top talent.
How to use graduate employees and interns to the benefit of your company
Hiring young talent can be beneficial to an organisation for several reasons. Aside from their enthusiasm and willingness to be flexible, they are also open to trying new things and eager to offer value and a fresh perspective. They are mostly tech savvy and have a lower cost to the company for the term of your agreement with them.
Hiring young talent means that you have the opportunity to mentor someone into an asset for the company.
Why should you fairly compensate graduate employees and interns?
It boils down to a simple value exchange, which is agreed on ahead of time. Where your graduate employee or intern shares their skill set, time and capacity for the benefit of your company, and in return they will receive a learning process and fair intern or graduate salary. Whether it be a wage, stipend or salary, it is up to you to determine what will add the most value to both you and the employee.
Below we discuss some of things to consider when you’re looking into how to provide fair compensation for entry level employees.
Market-related salary
According to Glassdoor, as of October 2023, the estimated total pay for a intern is ZAR 9,200 per month in the South Africa area, with an average salary of ZAR 8,000 per month. These numbers represent the median, which is the midpoint of the ranges from our proprietary Total Pay Estimate model and based on salaries collected from our users. Your go-to resource when looking to find fair compensation for all employees is something like Payscale or SETA. These resources will give you an indication to the market related salary expectation for a given role. From an ethical point of view, keeping within the range of the market-related salary is important.
If you are unsure of a salary speak to a specialised graduate recruitment agency like RecruitAGraduate. We work with graduates and interns all the time and are up to date with market related salaries.
Total cost to the company and employee respectively
Take a look at what you need the graduate or intern to deliver within their role - the job spec. Be as detailed as possible to get granular about what your expectation is. Account for what training and other resources will be needed to invest in the graduate to help them to do their job. Once completed take a look at what it may cost the employee to perform their duties. They might need compensation for travel, food or access to a variety of company resources. How can you align these elements to a fair graduate salary?
Graduate programme vs. internship
A graduate program is different from an internship. Where a graduate program is designed to take your pick from the trained-in-house cream of the crop, an internship may operate more like a temporary value exchange.
You could hire a graduate once their internship term is up because you already know the value they will bring and you will know where you want to help them grow.
Hire top talent through RecruitAGraduate
RecruitAGraduate is your outsource partner for graduate recruiting. We can offer different levels of graduate and internship recruitment based on your requirements. We attract top talent from quality universities and colleges around the country. Load a job or get in touch with our professional team today.