Students Land Competitive Internships at Leading Social Enterprises

By: Sam Harris, Marketing and Information Systems, Class of 2018
Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

It’s not easy to land that dream summer internship. In fact, it can be downright difficult to find a gig that is a perfect fit.

Perhaps no one knows this pain better than those interested in social enterprise. An already competitive industry, social enterprises utilize a unique recruitment strategy that is usually separate from the traditional process most students are accustomed to. For students in the Social Innovation Fellows (SIF) here at the Smith School, the career side of social innovation was not as accessible as it could be until their faculty champion Prof. David Kirsch decided to take action.

With ambitions of exposing his students to the social innovation community, Prof. Kirsch reached out to Smith School alumnus Ryan Steinbach. Ryan is the Program Lead and Founder of Mission Driven, a social enterprise that seeks to help young professionals build and advance mission driven careers. Ryan was a member of the second-ever SIF cohort, giving him a special connection to Prof. Kirsch’s mission and reason to help.

Prof. Kirsch’s primary goal in this effort was to set up an event that provided SIF students access to the world of social enterprise. He envisioned a space where students could talk openly with people who are currently a part of the social innovation community, those who take deliberate actions towards solving global problems through business solutions every day. Ryan understood and shared this vision, as he wanted to provide an experience outside of the classroom that his SIF cohort did not necessarily receive.

“When I did SIF we did all of these really cool projects,” Ryan explains. “You learned about yourself, you built some cool skills, you had some interesting experiences, and then it was sort of up to us individually to take those experiences and translate them into job or internship.”

It was from this missing link that the Summer Intern Match was born. Hosted at ImpactHub DC, twelve social enterprises sat down with SIF students for an evening of light networking and learning. Ryan is a current member of ImpactHub and was able to use his insider knowledge to help set things up.

“It ended up being pretty informal,” Ryan says. “I think that if it was a formal job fair where there were booths, and it was very explicit that you’re trying to find a job, it might have been a little more forced. What ended up happening were these organic conversations...people could just float things that were interesting to them, and people could just have cool conversation.”

Despite this being the first-ever event of this kind for SIF, it was a resounding success. Four out of the 20 students that attended actually received summer internships with ImpactHub or ImpactHub member organizations.

Beyond the jobs and experience gained from the Summer Intern Match, the event was able to bridge the gap between social enterprise and students. Organizations driven by social impact are often missing from career fairs because they lack the capacity to attend more traditional job fairs. Luckily for students and local social enterprises, Prof. Kirsch and Ryan are aiming to ensure that the Summer Intern Match becomes a regular part of the SIF program.

The success of the Summer Intern Match and SIF’s growth probably has you really excited at this point, and you’re probably wondering “What can I do to get involved with the social innovation community?”

“Join SIF!” Prof. Kirsch states. If you can’t do that, Ryan recommends that you “Sign up, show up” for ImpactHub events. And if that’s even a little too ambitious for you right now, Ryan suggests that you subscribe to the Center for Social Value Creation biweekly newsletter. “There are things happening in and around campus all the time.”

It was a year of growth for SIF, one that will undoubtedly shape the future of a now more career-oriented program. Regardless of whether or not they received internships, the crucial message Prof. Kirsch wanted to relay to students - and will continue to instill in future SIF students for many Summer Intern Matches to come - is “These are social enterprises, this is the world in which they operate, and you can be a part of that world.”