My Experience With Hiring Interns from InternShala

I started my blogging career in 2015.

Writing blogs and creating websites under one or two niches. At that time I was one army man who did everything from writing, and editing to creating graphics to promoting the blog on social media, and SEO.

Name it and I have done that for my blogs alone.

I outsourced a few articles to Indian writers but didn’t find any worthy enough for my blog so I decided I won’t be outsourcing content on my main blog and I will be writing all of it.

For other blogs, I tried a few freelancers who provided articles on a requirement basis.

I tried a few Facebook groups for hiring people but wasn’t satisfied with the content quality. I was getting a fair amount of people writing for me but the quality was lacking in all senses.

Eventually, the workload was piling up and I decided to hire interns.

Best Place to Hire interns in India? Internshala! (So as they Say!)

I wanted to test with Internshala. Here is my experience with hiring from internshala.

Internshala Requirements

At first, I thought only companies are allowed to post on internshala but then I registered with my own business email. And started writing a job description! Easy Peasy!

Let me take a while and appreciate me for hiring people at the age of 22! *Happy Grins*

I wrote a description stating I need 1000-word articles a day!

When I put out my post with Rs. 5000 stipend, 5 days work and needed quality. BOOM! 254 Applications!

Managing everything from my Rotaract club’s installation to interacting with clients, it took me literally a whole week to process those 240 applications for content writing!!

I was going to pay people, so I needed experienced people only!

• Rejected tons who had no portfolio.
• Rejected tons with only college-related content work like magazine content.

100 applications rejected in 2 hours.

The issue with getting 240 applications was, I clearly mentioned the following points:

1. DO NOT APPLY if you are a fresher!
2. DO NOT APPLY if you can’t write technical articles
3. DO NOT APPLY if you can’t write 1000 words daily

Easy to filter people right?

Why I did do this?

Never expected so many. I got to know that the platform edited the above points and allowed everyone to apply (even freshers!)

If anyone from internshala team is reading this, please add a filter of “Applicants with attachments or experience only!”

I wanted a person who has a flare in technical as well as creative writing as well. Especially writing blog posts after researching the topic well.

I have now successfully gone through all those 254 applications (hectic af) and shortlisted just 21!

Yes. I experimented with 2 other applications with less stipend too.

Well, I received an application from an old friend who read my application on internshala and then directly texting me on Whatsapp. This morning I was thinking about making her Senior Content writer and under her 1 good writer from internshala.

But

Before moving on to hiring that 1 person, I had to give an assignment to shortlist 21 candidates to test their skills. Because the people I am counting on may not be able to write content in my way.

Let me tell you that everyone looks brilliant on resumes and cover letters but when you give them any task, then you get to know their actual skills.

Always test before Hiring People. Give them tasks and don’t forget to give a DEADLINE to submit. This way you get to know whether they can produce results within a given time frame or not!

Results of Hiring at the end of the article…

What I Learned about Hiring:

1. Have a clear sense of WHY you are hiring

Fortunately, I was earning enough to pay people at least 2 people a month as interns. So I had a clear WHY about hiring.

If you are starting out on hiring as a solo entrepreneur, check your schedule first. Check where can you remove time for your own work. As I had a lot of things to do apart from work, it became difficult to work on my blogs.

But as everyone around me suggested I must always focus on things that make me money first and then my other ventures. This is my bread and butter and if that goes haywire, I won’t be able to function properly.

So remember to always have a clear sense of WHY are you hiring. Be it to save time, save money or save workload!

2. Have a clear sense of What are you Hiring for

Here, you need to know what are you hiring for. I knew I had to produce content /blogs in order to continue or increase my earnings per blog.

Yes, I could have hired people like assistants, digital marketers with overall knowledge, and people for outreaching out to other bloggers for guest posting but the first thing that came to my mind was…

I NEED A LOT OF CONTENT!

Content to keep my blogs fresh in the eyes of google. Content to guest post. Content to outreach to other bloggers.

Prioritize your work accordingly and hire for the most important thing first. The important thing may save you time, save your workload, increase money-making chances or decrease your stress overall.

3. Have a clear sense of HOW are you Hiring

Here, check the platforms for hire. Now I am not a big fan or don’t have a lot of experience with online hiring but as my peers have told me. I always will find the right people offline after meeting them and clearly explaining my expectations to them.

Talking about this internshala gig:

I knew I didn’t want a fresher. I didn’t want a writer without technical writing skills. I didn’t want a writer who cannot write 1000 words daily.

Know what you want and accordingly put out your expectations in the industry.

Linkedin is another way of hiring people. I haven’t tried it yet but have heard good people are present on LinkedIn as well. 

Coming back to Internshala hiring tip,

If you have 100s of applications, try giving applicants some kind of small tasks to do.

Not skipping this step before ensures I am hiring the right one. In my case, I gave them two articles to write:

1. Technical
2. Creative

Both were 500 words each to be submitted in 2 days.

What I learned about Getting Hired

I received many applications where the majority were freshers. To all those freshers, you can at least write one 1000 words articles before applying to 10s of internships online!

How can I judge you without your work!!? It’s like buying a box of sweets without even opening it!

The fun fact is after writing those 1000 words, you can freely apply to 10s, not 50 internships dude! This will literally change your “getting hired” chances from 0 top 60% by attaching a portfolio!

It’s just 1 article! or 5-10 best creatives (in case of graphic design)

Now I know we have people who expect to get hired after doing a course online/offline with no portfolio! But People need to have a portfolio before applying anywhere!

Tips to all those who want to get hired:

1. Learn basic communication skills.
   Let me rephrase it properly: Learn to talk formally with peers. Learn to write formal emails. Learn business writing or whatever that term is.
2. Learn a skill.
   If you want to get hired for graphics. Do not start with illustrator after thinking illustrators get a lot of money than basic graphic designers. Start small, Scale big. Start with the basics of graphic designing, fonts, colour psychology, framing, tools, etc
3. After learning a skill for a month at least, try out your skills and design anything FOR FREE!!!!
   People expect others to give money in return of designs while starting out. Well. You are not Picasso! Have as many designs as possible. refine and learn how you can make those designs more creative! Learning and interacting part should not stop.
4. After you have a decent portfolio of work.
   Start putting out on social media. Be it instagram or LinkedIn (best place to start in 2019). Share your designs and keep creating them every day.

So Finally RESULTS OF INTERNSHALA

HIRED CANDIDATES: NONE!

Many of them got the filter out and I frankly expected that as well. Literally 1 candidate came back with the articles which I had to send a follow-up email to check-in.

What can Internshala improve as a platform:

1. Setting up clear filters for judging. As you know, I was not looking for freshers. Clearly mentioned that in the description but it got cleared somehow. (Update – New plan allows you to get connected with vetted interns from Internshala team)
2. Good Filters on the dashboard.
   Ability to filter people who have attached documents so that only people who have a portfolio can be interviewed.
3. Having a cap of applicants to process. Going through 254 applications was insane.

Do not expect to get hired after doing a course. If you get hired, I will be happy but if you really want to make sure you get hired.

Craft a portfolio or start working on one! Having one article/proof of work increases your chances of hiring drastically!

I would also recommend working for free with local shops/companies just to get that letter of recommendation or an experience of a lifetime!

So this was my experience with hiring from Internshala. Let me know if you found this blog useful.