This summer COCC welcomed 24 new interns into the organization, spanning over 22 participating departments. This was a high watermark for the program, which began back in 2014 with only a handful of interns at the time. Six years later we have continued to grow the initiative, adding new educational and team building elements to enhance the intern experience. This year’s cohort of interns participated in several activities including weekly lunch & learns, on and offsite team building activities, and career development workshops.

As a result of these additions, our exit survey scores were among the highest to date, receiving an average score of 5 (scale of 1-5), which included opportunities for interns to rate their satisfaction level with the program, their manager, and their coworkers. Presently, we have converted four of this year’s interns to full time employees, and we currently have 14 remaining on staff. And in 2018 COCC converted a total of 9 of its 21 interns to full-time employees.

This program continues to be an excellent source of local talent for COCC, partnering with five local schools this year. CCSU continues to lead the pack with a little over half of this year’s interns coming to us from the Blue Devils. We were also able to obtain financial assistance through the state funded organization CT Next to help subsidize some of our expenses.

As the market for talent tightens, we look forward to leveraging this recruiting resource well into the future, and we thank all of our managers and employees who make this a great experience for our interns every year!