Internship Coordinator: Caitlin Ramsay will check the Career Links site for applicants once a week. If there are new applicants on the site then Caitlin will email their applications to their respective Mentors.
Mentors will then review the applicants.
Mentors will then reach out to the qualified applicants to schedule interviews.
If Mentors do not feel confident in their ability to conduct interviews, they may request help from the Internship Coordinators. Mentors will still be expected to conduct the interviews as the lead interviewer, but Internship Coordinators can provide support, coaching and attend the interviews in addition to the Mentor.
PLEASE NOTE: Internship Coordinators WILL be REQUIRED to be part of the Interview process if there is a potential conflict of interest.
If Mentors are unsure if they have a conflict of interest or not, please reach out to the Internship Coordinators to better assess the situation.
There may be other extenuating circumstances that require the Internship Coordinators to conduct interviews or sit-it on the interviews. These situations will be assessed and addressed accordingly as they arise.
If Mentors have multiple applicants that are strong candidates and need help with deciding who to hire, they may perform second round/ follow up interviews.
Mentors may request that the Internship Coordinators (without the participation of Mentors) conduct a second round of interviews in order to help the Mentors hire the best applicant.
Mentors could do the second round of interviews by themselves or in conjunction with the Internship Coordinators.
Please plan accordingly, so that applicants are not put through three rounds of interviews.
If it becomes known that an applicant has applied for multiple Cooperative Extension Internship Experiences then Mentors should still hire the most qualified applicant for their internship experience. The Internship Leadership Team understands that this may mean that an applicant could get multiple internship experience offers. This is fine. The Internship Leadership Team would want the applicant to have the opportunity to choose which internship experience would be the best fit for them.
As of Fall Academic Year 2021-22, there is no applicant minimum number in order to conduct interviews. This may change as the program becomes established and grows.
Once all interviews have been conducted and a decision on who to hire has been made, the Mentor will reach out and offer their internship experience to the desired applicant.
The applicant may wish to have time to think about accepting the Internship.
An adequate amount of time for the applicant to consider the offer should be established between the Applicant and the Mentor.
If the Mentor has not heard from the applicant by the agreed upon deadline, then one final attempt by the Mentor to reach the applicant will be made to ascertain if the applicant is going to accept or decline the internship experience offer.
If after reasonable attempts to contact the applicant have been made by the Mentor, and the Mentor has still not heard from the applicant, the mentor may move on to offering the Internship Experience to other qualified applicants with the deduced assumption that the initial applicant has declined the internship experience.
If an applicant declines an Internship Experience, then the Mentor may move on to extend an offer to another qualified applicant.
If there are no other qualified applicants, then options may be discussed with Internship Coordinators.
If an applicant accepts an Internship Experience, then the Mentor will need to inform Internship Coordinator: Caitlin Ramsay, so she can close out the job on Career links and inform other advertising outlets.
The Mentor should then work with the Intern on a start date goal. (Start dates can vary depending on the speed that Employment paperwork gets processed.)
Mentor will inform Intern that Internship Coordinator: Caitlin Ramsay will be reaching out to start Employment paperwork. If Intern requires a background check, Mentor will be expected to set that up also.
