Employers Seeking COB Interns

The College of Business internship program encourages COB students to gain real world experience that reinforces lessons learned in the classroom. This real world experience not only helps a student gain better insight into how the academic experience will be applied after graduation,  but it can often help the student reaffirm or reevaluate his or her chosen profession.. Any and all of these outcomes are positive for the student. The primary benefit to the intern employer should be exposure to potential entry level employees who bring with them energy and fresh ideas from the world of academia.

The objective of the COB internship program is to ensure that an internship is educational while at the same time in compliance with University policies. The experience must be an extension of the classroom, a learning experience that provides for the application of knowledge gained in the classroom. It should not be simply to advance the operations of the employer or be the work that a regular employee would routinely perform. Generally our policies follow those of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Those policies are as follows:

  • The skills or knowledge learned must be transferable to other employment settings;
  • The experience has a defined beginning and end, and a job description with desired qualifications;
  • There are clearly defined learning objectives/goals related to the professional goals of the student's academic coursework;
  • There is supervision by a professional with expertise and educational and/or professional background in the field of the experience;
  • There is routine feedback by the experienced supervisor; and
  • There are resources, equipment, and facilities provided by the host employer that support learning objectives/goals.

Additionally, COB requires that the student have junior or senior status and a minimum 2.0 Grade Point Average. The internship itself should:

  • Provide student interns with pre-professional activities similar to that of a new entrant in the field;
  • Allow the intern to use classroom knowledge and provide hands-on experience;
  • Be directly related to a student's academic major and/or career goals;
  • Provide a student with a minimum of 120 hours of work during a placement period. Interns should work a maximum of 20 hours per week during the academic semester and a maximum of 40 hours per week during winter and summer breaks; and
  • Limit clerical or non-professional duties to 20% or less of the overall tasks.

  • The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;
  • The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;
  • The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;
  • The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;
  • The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and
  • The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

Intern employers must submit the proposed internship to the Director of Internships or Internship Coordinator in the form of a position description in a MS Word file to cba-internships@csulb.edu  or us the form Internship Job Form. Once approved the internship will be posted to the CBA database of open internships and all CBA students will be notified of the new posting. If the posting is for a student with a specific field of study (i.e. accounting), the Chair of that department will be notified and he or she will ask department faculty to discuss the position with students they feel would be qualified and interested.

Intern employers should be aware of the following guidelines.

  • All internship postings submitted to COB are reviewed and approved at the discretion of the Director of Internships. We reserve the right not to post a position if it does not appear to support the best interests of students and/or the University; and
  • The internship position description and should include the name and contact information of the employer, a functional description of the position, specific duties, hours of work per week, skills and abilities required to do the work, rate of pay if any, location of employment and application instructions.

 We do not post:

  • Positions that require an initial investment or payment by the prospective employee;
  • Positions that appear to discriminate against applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation or gender; and
  • Anonymous ads, positions for independent contractors, positions based in private homes or positions submitted by third party recruiters unwilling to provide us with client contact information.

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