Virtual interns don't dress up or make the coffee

by Elizabeth Hayes
for Virginia Business
January 2006

After working as an intern for several weeks, Michael Clark couldn’t begin to describe the offices of his employer. Nor had he met his boss, at least not in person. That’s because the Radford University senior is one of a new breed of virtual interns. The market research he performed for TrueCareers, a Reston-based job search company, was done entirely on his computer and cell phone. “You don’t have to dress up and sit in an office and stuff envelopes,” says Clark. “They can call me when they need me and not have me just sit there waiting for something to do.”

While many companies still offer traditional on-site internships, interest is growing in the use of student talent via the Internet, says Mason Gates, a 41-year-old Richmond entrepreneur and founder of InternDirect. The startup matches interns such as Clark with companies that need help with market research and other tasks that can be performed away from the office.

“I knew the dynamic of the work world was changing and experiential education is a big part of that,’’ says Gates, whose previous ventures include founding (and later selling) Campus Voice, a collegiate media and marketing company, and serving as vice president at JobDirect, which created a national database of résumés. “The cool part is . . . that it’s not changing anything, it’s just accommodating a different way of work.”

Working life has become increasingly decentralized, with 44.4 million people nationwide performing some work from home via telecommuting in 2004, up 7.5 percent from 2003, according to one national survey. Add to that the “tremendous entrepreneurial zeal in the current workplace” fueled by the Internet boom and the idea of virtual interns makes sense, adds Gates.

Gates first pitched the idea to his alma mater, Radford. The school is nearly four hours from any major metropolitan areas, yet three quarters of the students do internships, making the virtual intern program attractive, says Kathy Jordan, director of Radford’s Center for Experiential Learning and Career Development. So far, about 30 Radford students have participated.

The program works like this: Employers fill out a needs profile and pay a subscription of $139 a month to get matched with a student. The students fill out an experience profile and register to be added to InternDirect’s database. A software program matches the two parties. Half of the revenue, or $69.50 a month, goes to the virtual student intern, 5 percent goes to the college’s career center and 45 percent goes back to InternDirect.

Gates has signed 11 contracts with executives from companies such as satellite television provider EchoStar Commu-nications Corp., Arlington-based software firm Expert Choice and Richmond-based Chisolm Creative Solutions, a marketing firm. Besides Radford, he is in discussions with several other universities to participate in the program.

Richard Brosnahan tapped a virtual intern to do market research for his Richmond-based software startup, Engineering Arts. “It’s a reasonably inexpensive way to get good legwork done without hiring someone part time or full time,’’ he says. “We can use the telephone, e-mail and instant messaging and get the work done just as efficiently, if not more so, as working in an office.”