Preparing to host an intern in Scotland

Partnering with Career Ready

Thank you for your tremendous commitment to supporting Scotland’s young talent at a time when young people really need support to develop and flourish.

We have prepared this guidance to support you in the delivery of your four-week paid internship(s).

Key milestones & actions

Key dates:

Internship start dates:

Monday 23 June 2025 – Friday 18 July 2025: All Scotland except Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, and Fife

Monday 30 June 2025 – Friday 25 July 2025: Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Fife

By 14 March (as soon as possible if you haven’t already completed)

Employers submit onboarding and Health & Safety requirements for internships form (ensures Local Authority Health & Safety checks can commence)

By end March 2025 (as soon as possible if you haven’t already completed)

Employers communicate to your students and mentors your organisation’s onboarding requirements using the Employer Checklist for Internship Onboarding & Planning

Preparing to host an intern in Scotland

Partnering with Career Ready

Partnering with Career Ready

Thank you for your tremendous commitment to supporting Scotland’s young talent at a time when young people really need support to develop and flourish.

We have prepared this guidance to support you in the delivery of your four-week paid internship(s).

Key milestones & actions

Key dates:

Internship start dates:

Monday 24 June 2024 – Friday 19 July 2024: For all areas EXCEPT Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire

Monday 1 July 2024 – Friday 26 July 2024: Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire

By 8 March (as soon as possible if you haven’t already completed)

Employers submit onboarding and Health & Safety requirements for internships form (ensures Local Authority Health & Safety checks can commence)

By end March 2024 (as soon as possible if you haven’t already completed)

Employers communicate to your students and mentors your organisation’s onboarding requirements using the Employer Checklist for Internship Onboarding & Planning

Key milestones & actions

Any unavoidable variation to internship start/end dates has implications. Please discuss with your Career Ready Regional Manager.

Please ensure the actions starting with the green icon (🟢) are completed by the date specified. supporting information for all aspects of the internships can be found in the ‘everything you need to know’ section.

ACTIONS TO COMPLETE

🟢 14 March – Employers submit onboarding and Health & Safety requirements for internships form (ensures Local Authority Health & Safety checks can commence)

🟢 By the end of March – Internship job description is visible on employers’ portal for viewing to support their internship planning – employers can make edits to this on the portal.

If you do choose to update the job description on the Career Ready portal, students will not be automatically notified. Please take the lead in communicating internship plans and job description information directly to your student(s) and mentor(s).

🟢 By the end of March – Take the lead on communicating to your students and mentors your organisation’s onboarding requirements using the Employer Checklist for Internship Onboarding & Planning.

Based on previous experience, we know that onboarding is better enabled when a mentor supports their student to collate the onboarding information required. Please diarise session(s) with your student(s) and mentor(s) to communicate your onboarding requirements before the end of March 2025 (Easter holidays begin 28 March – 23 April 2025 followed by exams from 28 April until 2 June 2025).

We have shared the internship onboarding minimum requirements with all students and mentors. Please use the Employer Checklist for Internship Onboarding & Planning to support you in determining and communicating your onboarding requirements with your student(s) and mentor(s).

🟢 13, 20 and 27 March – Join us for an employer led onboarding conversation. We are delighted to invite you to a virtual information session to hear from other employers how they engage young people most successfully in their internship onboarding and pre-employment processes. This session is ideal for anyone newer to providing Career Ready internships, or who would like to hear tips and experiences from other employers on getting the best from the pre-employment process.

Date: Thursday 13, 20 & 27 March

Time: 4pm – 4.45pm

28 March – 23 April – School holidays

28 April to 2 June – Student exams take place across Scotland

April to June – Health & Safety checks and visits carried out by Local Authorities (employer onboarding and Health & Safety form being submitted is key to this).

May to June – Virtual briefings for internship supervisors / line managers

23 June – Internships start (final week of school term): All Scotland except Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Fife

30 June – Internships start (final week of school term) in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Fife

 

ACTIONS TO COMPLETE

🟢 Schedule student pre-internship planning meeting: Employers diarise sessions with your student(s) and mentor(s) (to take place w.c. 9 and 16 June ideally after exams are finished) to ensure first day arrangements and induction information is shared clearly with students, mentors and supervisors/line managers before start date.

This is an important opportunity for the student(s) to meet other people they will be working with, which may or may not include their mentor, and also to explain first day arrangements and induction information per the employer onboarding and Health & Safety checklist.

If a face-to-face meeting is not possible, they can be conducted via your preferred online platform (MS Teams, Google Meet etc). If you are not the internship supervisor/line manager, it would be helpful to include them. These meetings should ideally take place during the week of 9 or 16 June, after students have completed their exams and participated in Masterclass 3: Preparing for Work.

ACTIONS TO COMPLETE

🟢 Internship week 1: First week check-in by school staff

🟢 Internship week 4: Final week student presentations

Everything you need to know

The following guidance has been prepared to help support you in the delivery of your four-week paid internship(s). Thank you to all of you who have worked with us to shape this.

We hope you’ll be able to join us for an Internship Planning Session, designed to help people in your organisation who will be involved in Career Ready internships this summer. This might include mentors, internship supervisors, line managers, colleagues who are coordinating or managing the internships and anyone else who would benefit from finding out more.

The session will include guidance on preparing for and supporting a positive, productive, and valuable internship experience for students, your people, and your organisation.

We’ve arranged six sessions, which will take place through Microsoft Teams. You can attend any session.

  • Monday 21 April, 4pm-5pm
  • Wednesday 23 April, 10am-11am
  • Monday 28 April, 4pm-5pm
  • Wednesday 30 April, 12 noon-1pm
  • Tuesday 6 May, 12 noon-1pm
  • Tuesday 6 May, 4pm-5pm

The joining link for each session is the same:

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 383 203 717 137

Passcode: Gi9rh6PQ

Please save the Microsoft Teams link in your diary for the session you wish to attend. You don’t need to RSVP.

If you can’t attend any of the sessions, you can access the resources:

View a summary of the feedback from the summer 2024 internships.

All feedback has helped inform how we best prepare for and support the 2025 internships.

Hear first-hand from former interns and employers.

View summer 2024 social media celebrations.

We can’t wait to hear about all the successes of this summer’s internships. Thank you to all of you who have worked with us to shape this. 

We’ve produced examples of projects and workload suggestions from employers who have delivered Career Ready internships:

 

The Employer Checklist for Internship Onboarding & Planning is designed to support you in planning your internship and communicating arrangements with your student(s) and mentor(s).

Working hours

Working hours regulation states that under 18s cannot work more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. Further guidance can be found on the ACAS website.

We anticipate that internships will follow your organisation’s working day, taking account of working hours regulations for under 18s. We recommend a mix of participating in meetings and delivering tasks and projects.

Career Ready is committed to the safeguarding of young people and keeping them safe from harm. Please take the time to read our guidance on Safeguarding on pages 10 & 11 of the Internship Handbook. We will also cover in our briefings for supervisors and line managers.

Code of good practice

  • Treat all young people equally – show no favouritism.
  • Be mindful of an individual’s one to one workload. Involve other colleagues or have interns work in small groups instead of one to one.
  • If meeting face to face, plan for this to take place in an open environment within sight of others and keep other managers informed of where you are and what you are doing. There should be no 121 interactions in any enclosed spaces such as meeting rooms with closed doors or travelling in a car alone with a young person.
  • Virtual meetings should be conducted via an appropriate platform e.g Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Facetime, taking into account any Career Ready, School, Local Authority or employer guidance. Please note: Most Local Authorities will not permit the use of Zoom on Local Authority provided devices (which many students have). If you use Zoom you may have to provide a device for the student to access Zoom. Microsoft Teams is the platform used by most schools (not all).
  • Students will interact with people from across your organisation, and we have made our safeguarding expectations explicit with all employers, requesting that there are no 121 interactions online unless the person has a Protection of Vulnerable Groups scheme membership (criminal record check) with Career Ready, or a person with a PVG is present (current or past mentor).
  • For online group sessions, please ensure meetings are secure and that waiting room/lobby functionality is utilised to ensure attendees are as anticipated.
  • As part of the communications around internships, school coordinators have been asked to follow Local Authority and school protocols e.g. informing parents/carers about internships and seeking consent where appropriate.
  • Respect a young person’s right to personal privacy.
  • Allow young people to talk about any concerns they may have.
  • Do not get drawn into inappropriate attention-seeking behaviour.
  • Avoid inappropriate language, behaviour or contact.
  • Don’t make suggestive remarks or threats to a young person, even in fun.
  • Be mindful that someone else might misinterpret your actions, no matter how well intentioned.
  • Never trivialise abuse or condone abusive peer activities, e.g. bullying.
  • Don’t form a relationship that is an abuse of trust with a young person.
  • Don’t just rely on your good name to protect you. If you suspect abuse, if a young person confides in you or if a complaint is made about any adult or about yourself, it is your duty to report the concern to your senior manager. DO NOT let allegations, suspicions, or concerns about abuse go unreported. In such cases, allow the young person to speak without interruption; accept what is said.
  • Offer immediate understanding and reassurance; pass no judgement.
  • Advise that you will try to offer support but that you must pass the information on.
  • Immediately contact the student’s school coordinator or, if school holidays have already started, your Career Ready Regional Manager who will have emergency contact details for the Local Authority safeguarding contact.
  • Write careful notes of what you witnessed, heard or were told and send it to the designated safeguarding contact given to you by either the school or Career Ready – usually by email marked confidential unless another method is specifically requested. Use the actual words where possible.
  • Make a written note of when this information was reported and to whom it was given.
  • Notify your manager that an issue has arisen but do not disclose the nature.
  • Try to ensure no one is placed in a position that could cause further concern or compromise.
  • For urgent safeguarding concerns please contact Janine.mcfarland@careerready.org.uk or via mobile 07717281930

The minimum cost of a four-week paid internship is £1057, excluding NIC (based on the 2025 minimum wage for under 18s of £7.55ph for 35 hours per week for 4 weeks). Payment is made directly from the employer to young person. Where an employer has a Real Living Wage Policy, that is applied. A student working 35 hours at the Real Living Wage would be paid £12.60 per hour equating to £1,764 over the four-week period. 

To minimise complications of differing working patterns and to be fair to students, we kindly request that you maintain the minimum payment to any student for their internship of £1057 (based on the £7.55 per hour minimum wage for 35 hours per week for 4 weeks.) 

In very exceptional circumstances, Career Ready can manage the payroll on your behalf. We charge at administration fee of £160 & VAT per student. 

All employment will be directly with you as the employer and will not be subcontracted to Career Ready.

Real Living Wage (outside London)* National Living Wage** 18-20 Year Old Minimum Wage Rate** 16-17 Year Old Minimum Wage Rate**
Hourly rate £12.60 £12.21 £10.00 £7.55
Pay for four weeks £1,764 £1,709 £1,400 £1,057

*Sourced from the Living Wage Foundation

**Sourced from Gov.UK, coming into effect April 2025

We will be in touch with your organisation’s internship point of contact at the beginning of March to ensure they have access to our employer portal where they can review the internship job description. Internship job description information will be pre-filled for your organisation, which your organisation’s internship point of contact can edit or add to if they wish. Guidance on editing or adding to the pre-filled job description can be found in the Employer Portal Guidance. Please inform us if you do update anything at Scotland.enquiries@careerready.org.uk as we are not automatically notified. If you do choose to update the job description on the Career Ready portal, students will not be automatically notified. Please take the lead in communicating internship plans and job description information directly to your student(s) and mentor(s). No changes should be made to start or end dates without a discussion with your Career Ready Regional Manager first.

A job description is designed to give your intern(s) an overview of the work they will be doing, and the skills required or to be developed. An internship job description has been sent to students, schools and mentors by PDF. Please use the Employer Checklist for Internship Onboarding & Planning to support you in communicating your internship arrangements with your student(s) and mentor(s).

The information you provide via the internship onboarding and health & safety form (emailed to you in February for completion by Friday 14 March 2025), forms an essential basis for Health & Safety checks which will be carried out by Local Authorities before the internship starts.

Once this form is completed, your identified H&S person will be contacted by a member of the Local Authority Health & Safety team if this is required for your organisation, based on recency, location and work undertaken by young people in your workplace.

Students, with the support of their school, can elect to participate in the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) Personal Development Unit: Self and Work, or SQA Work Experience Unit to underpin their internship experience and obtain accredited tariff points on their school leaver certificate. Mentors and internship supervisors/line managers can support students who are completing either of these units by providing guidance and encouragement to enable them to meet the learning outcomes. Please be aware that not all schools offer these qualifications, and some students may not be aware of it.

Please share a copy of the internship handbook with your internship supervisors/line managers when available.

An internship supervisor/line manager, who may be the student’s mentor, will play a leading role in supporting student’s internship experience.

Being an internship supervisor/line manager is an excellent development opportunity, giving staff experience of management.

Many employers also provide a dedicated day to day buddy for an intern, so that they have a go to person for any questions and support needed beyond the tasks / projects assigned.

Once you have identified supervisors/line managers, please ensure you provide them with guidance on areas such as:

  • inducting interns and the provision of all necessary resources
  • developing learning objectives and goals with the intern
  • preparing other colleagues and team members to support the intern
  • evaluating progress and providing regular feedback
  • supporting the student to develop an end of internship presentation

We will send you details of the virtual internship supervisor/ line manager briefing in May/June which covers specific information about their role and the Career Ready programme.

Students benefit from delivering a presentation at the end of their internship covering, for example, what they have learned and developed from the experience, their contribution to the organisation, their feelings about their future and where their focus will be with their mentor for the remainder of their programme. Many organisations use this as an opportunity to gather feedback too – a great way for others in your organisation to appreciate the difference you are making to young people.

Some employers extend the employment relationship with an intern. This is not an expectation of the programme, and any arrangements are made entirely at the employer’s discretion.

Students will have the opportunity to present on their internship when they return to school at a Celebration of Success event. Another purpose of this event is to support students to reconnect with their mentor after the summer break.

As a Career Ready ambassador, we love it when you promote your involvement with Career Ready and highlight students’ internship achievements. Articles in an internal newsletter/intranet, press releases, and conversations at networking events helps to spread the word about your organisation’s involvement and can encourage other employers to get involved with Career Ready.

Please also share and celebrate your involvement across your social media channels (tag us @CareerReadyUK). We cannot wait to share what you post across our extensive network.

Students will greatly appreciate a reference from your organisation and perhaps practical help during the internship with updating their CV to support college, UCAS, job applications and interviews, which can be refined with their mentor.

We will send a feedback survey to you and your internship supervisors/line managers. The feedback from internships in summer 2024 has really helped inform this summer’s internships.

Gaining media consent.

FAQs

The students on the Career Ready programme undertake the internship in the summer between S5 and S6 and are aged 16/17 years old. After the internship students will return to S6 at school or, for some, move into work or onto college.

As a social mobility charity, Career Ready is about ensuring no young person who wants to take part in the programme cannot, due to the need to earn during the summer holidays. Unpaid internships are a barrier to social mobility. It’s unfair that students and graduates from wealthier backgrounds can take part in, and benefit from, unpaid internships, while many others simply cannot afford to. This can be because their families can’t support them financially while they are doing it or because they don’t live near to where most internships take place.

We ask that each student has an internship supervisor (who may be their mentor) – someone to act as a key point of contact within the organisation for the duration of their internship. The exact remit will depend on the nature and structure of your organisation and the format of the individual internship experience. For example, if you work alongside the student for the full internship, you will have a different role than if your student works across different departments. It can work well to assign someone from your team as a ‘buddy’ who may have recently been through education themselves, and as an opportunity for development for someone at the beginning of their career.

Most students are given access to anything a normal temporary member of staff would be given. Some students may need to sign a confidentiality agreement with the company or have limited access to certain systems, so please consider this in your planning and onboarding of students.

The Living Wage (or Real Living Wage) is calculated and accredited by the Living Wage Foundation. In order to become an accredited Living Wage Employer, organisations must pay all directly employed staff the Real Living Wage, and have a plan in place to extend that to regular sub-contracted staff as well. The current Real Living Wage rate is £12.60 per hour (outside London).

The National Living Wage is set by the UK Government, and is the term used to describe the national minimum wage for those aged 21 and over (it is still referred to as National Minimum wage for everyone aged 16 – 20). This is separate to the Living Wage rate calculated by the Living Wage Foundation.

Career Ready is committed to the safeguarding of young people, in line with our Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy published on our website. For further information on our safeguarding principles for internships see pages 10 and 11 of the internship handbook.

During the first week of the internship school coordinators will be in school and are the best first point of contact for any concerns around student attendance. For the remainder of the internship once schools have closed for summer, please contact your Career Ready Regional Manager, or Local Authority Coordinator (contact details for whom are shared at the internship supervisor briefing).

Yes. Whilst students do accrue holidays over the period of the internship, it is expected students will not take leave while on internship to maximise their time. However, it is up to each employer how they will apply their own policy and please communicate this to your supervisors/line managers. The statutory holiday accrual for 4 weeks is 2 days based on a 5 day / 35 hour working week. As some interns may be working less than this, any holiday accrual will be pro-rata and may be absorbed into their reduced working hours arrangements.

The internship dates are carefully planned to ensure students can be supported in their first few days by their school before summer holidays begin, and students and their families have committed to keeping these dates as free as possible.

Any employer changes to the planned internship start and end dates cannot be guaranteed and would require the organisation to facilitate all that entails.

Students return to school from 13 August 2025.

An internship is an opportunity for a young person to experience your workplace and working realities, and where your organisation works in a hybrid way, interns can have some time working remotely. For young people to have the best chance of success however, and to benefit from being immersed in the working world, we would ask that the majority of time is spent in the workplace.