HR Intern Job Description

Key skills

Responsibilities

• • Maintain employee records in the HRIS under supervision, flagging gaps rather than guessing at missing values
• • Support onboarding logistics such as welcome packs, system access requests, and day-one schedules
• • Schedule interviews and confirm attendance with candidates and panel members
• • Draft first versions of internal announcements, handbook edits, and FAQ content for a reviewer
• • Run desk research on policy questions, benefit providers, or university partnerships
• • Collate engagement survey and exit questionnaire responses into a readable summary
• • Assist with the logistics of careers fairs, campus visits, and internal people events
• • Own one defined end-of-placement project agreed with a mentor at the start of the term

Requirements

• • Currently studying or recently graduated in any discipline, as HR-specific study is not essential
• • Demonstrated reliability and attention to detail in academic, volunteer, or part-time work
• • Comfort handling confidential information with discretion
• • Clear written communication and a habit of asking before assuming
• • Availability for the full agreed placement term, including known peak periods
• • Right to work in the relevant location for the duration of the placement

Nice to have

• • Coursework in employment law, organisational psychology, or people management
• • Experience in a society, committee, or student group that involved coordinating other people
• • Spreadsheet skill beyond the basics, such as pivot tables or lookup formulas
• • Prior customer-facing or service work, which builds the patience and discretion the role needs
• • A stated interest in a specific HR sub-discipline such as recruiting, reward, or learning and development

What to look for in a great HR Intern

You are not assessing HR knowledge, because there rarely is any yet. Assess the two things that cannot be taught inside a short placement: discretion and conscientiousness. An intern will see salary data, exit paperwork, and occasionally a live grievance, so a candidate who gossips casually in an interview will gossip in the office. Conscientiousness shows up in small proofs rather than claims, such as arriving prepared, spelling names correctly, and following an instruction exactly as given. Beyond that, look for someone who asks a clarifying question instead of quietly guessing, since guessing on a personnel record creates work for someone senior later.

Where to source HR Intern candidates

University careers services are the primary channel and the cheapest one, particularly if you can commit to a fixed placement window that fits an academic calendar. Business, psychology, law, and management faculties all produce suitable candidates, so do not restrict the brief to HR courses. Placement-year and sandwich-degree programmes give you a longer runway than a summer scheme. Student societies focused on business or consulting are a good passive channel, as are alumni of your own earlier cohorts who can refer classmates. If you want a wider socioeconomic mix, pair the posting with a paid offer and advertise beyond the two or three universities you already know.

Interview questions to ask an HR Intern

Keep it concrete and short. Ask 'Tell me about a time you were trusted with something you were not supposed to repeat, and how you handled it.' Then test instruction-following with a small realistic scenario: 'A manager emails asking for a colleague's home address so they can send a gift. What do you do?' You want an answer that hesitates and escalates rather than one that helpfully complies. Finish with 'What would make this placement worth your time?', which surfaces whether they have thought about the work or only about the line on their record. Depth of answer matters far less than judgement and honesty.

Structuring the placement so it is worth doing

The most common failure is hiring an intern with no plan and then discovering nobody has time to direct them. Before the offer goes out, name a mentor, block a recurring check-in, and write down one project with a deliverable that exists at the end of the term, such as a refreshed onboarding pack or a tidied policy library. Split the week between routine support and that project so the intern has something to point to and you have something to evaluate. Agree in advance what would trigger a conversion conversation, and tell the intern what it is on day one rather than at the end.

How an ATS handles a campus hiring round

Intern hiring is bursty, arriving as a large batch of similar applications within a narrow window, which is exactly the shape that overwhelms an inbox. Running the round through Pitch N Hire's ATS lets you screen against the same short criteria for every applicant, schedule batches of interviews without a scheduling thread per candidate, and reply to everyone rather than leaving the unsuccessful majority silent. That last point matters more here than in most hiring, because these are the people you may want to attract as graduates in two years. Keeping each cohort in the system also means next year's round starts with a warm list instead of a blank page.