Partnering with socially-conscious coding bootcamps for your internship program can form the foundation of your diversity initiative and provide access to engineering careers for traditionally underrepresented groups. Are these internships right for your company, and are you adequately prepared to host an intern?

A software engineering internship is a formative experience for a coding bootcamp graduate. Internships bridge the bootcamp’s abbreviated technical curriculum with an entry-level developer job. And because bootcamps actively recruit and graduate women, minorities, and other groups underrepresented in tech at much higher rates than universities do, providing internship opportunities for these graduates is an important lever in closing the gender gap and diversifying our shared candidate pool. Internship programs, furthermore, bring significant value to your team, your company’s culture, and your recruiting efforts.

But internships aren’t free — they require investment, particularly in your company culture — and they aren’t right for every team at every moment. In this article, I’ll explore some key considerations that hiring managers and company leaders should account for when building an internship program that caters to coding bootcamp graduates.

Part I: Incentive. Building the case for diversity and inclusion.

Part II: Investment. Weighing the costs and benefits of engineering internships.

Part III: Implementation. Essential features of a successful internship program.

Read the whole article on Medium.