The 40-Year-Old Intern: Understanding Mid-Career Re-Entry Internship Programs
Premier financial-sector firms including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and MetLife all offer re-entry internship programs to target the pool of talent that has taken a career break; a high-caliber, primarily female talent pool ready to re-engage after career breaks for child care, elder care or other reasons. We call this candidate “the 40-year-old intern.” Who is she, what are her career ambitions, and what are the track records of these highly selective programs where 50 percent to 90 percent of interns convert to permanent hires, usually at the VP level? For companies interested in increasing their ranks of mid- to senior-level female employees, these programs provide a blueprint to successfully re-engage this often untapped resource. This session will help you understand:
· Why re-entry internship programs are an effective strategy for engaging with the pool of talent on career break.
· The key statistics for re-entry internship programs, such as application periods, numbers of applicants, cohort sizes
and conversion rates of intern to permanent hire.
· The stages of career re-entry, by examining success stories of individual returning professionals.
· The strengths and weaknesses of the returning professional pool and strategies to maximize your success.
Carol Fishman Cohen
Carol Fishman Cohen works closely with employers to create reentry internship programs for returning professionals. Her TEDx talk “The 40-Year-Old Intern” makes the case for why reentry internships are the most effective way to engage with the high caliber pool of talent returning from career break, and what this means for other non-traditional career transitioner populations. A graduate of Harvard Business School and mother of four, Carol’s return to work at Bain Capital after 11 years out of the full-time workforce is documented in a Harvard Business School case study. She speaks globally about career reentry strategy and is frequently quoted on the topic in the national press.