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Internship: A Recruitment and Selection Perspective

Article in Journal of Applied Psychology · October 2010

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Journal of Applied Psychology © 2010 American Psychological Association
2011, Vol. 96, No. 1, 221–229 0021-9010/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0021295

RESEARCH REPORT

Internship: A Recruitment and Selection Perspective

Hao Zhao Robert C. Liden

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute University of Illinois at Chicago

In this study, we examined internship as a recruitment and selection process. On the basis of impression
management theory, we hypothesized that both organizations and interns make efforts to impress the
other party during the internship if they intend to hire or be hired. Using longitudinal data collected at
3 points from 122 intern–supervisor dyads in the United States, we found that 60% of internships turned
into job offers from the host organizations. Interns wishing to be hired were more likely to use
self-promotion and ingratiation, which increased the likelihood of job offers. Organizations wishing to
hire appeared to be more open to interns’ creativity, which increased interns’ application intentions. For
interns who indicated prior to their internship that they were not interested in working in their host
organizations after graduation, supervisory mentoring did not influence their subsequent intentions to
apply for full-time employment.

Keywords: internship, selection, recruitment, mentoring

Most research on recruitment and selection has been performed
under maximum performance situations, such as job interviews,
which can reveal only what applicants can do but not necessarily
what they will do after hiring (Klehe & Anderson, 2007; Sackett,
Zedeck, & Fogli, 1988). Authors of past reviews have indicated
that there is a need for empirical examinations of recruitment and
selection processes in typical performance situations (Campion,
1983; Posthuma, Moregeson, & Campion, 2002). In the current
study, we answered this call by focusing on a widely used but
rarely studied recruitment and selection approach in a typical
performance setting: internship. Internships are “structured and
career relevant work experiences obtained by students prior to
graduation from an academic program” (Taylor, 1988, p. 393).
After working side by side with permanent workers for weeks or
months, interns gain general work experience to help their future
job searches. More important, they are privileged to obtain direct
job offers from the host organizations upon completion of the
internship. For example, about 89% of J. P. Morgan’s and Gold-
man Sachs’ new hires during 2008 and 2009 were their former
interns (Gerdes, 2009). To date, the recruitment and selection
functions of internships have not received sufficient research
attention (Narayanan, Olk, & Fukami, 2010). In the current inves-
This article was published Online First October 18, 2010.
Hao Zhao, Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute; Robert C. Liden, Department of Managerial Studies,
University of Illinois at Chicago.
The research was funded by an Academy of Management Human
Resources Division/Society for Human Resource Management Foundation
dissertation grant award to Hao Zhao. We thank Sandy Wayne, Gerald
Hills, Tom Lumpkin, and Jim Larson for their helpful comments.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Hao
Zhao, Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytech-
nic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY 12180. E-mail: zhaoh@rpi.edu
tigation, we explored how interns and organizations use impres-
sion management (IM) to achieve their recruitment- and job-
search-related goals. We applied a stringent research design with
data collected at three time points and from two sources, which
enhances the internal validity of the findings (Cook & Campbell,
1979).
Interns and Internship
Most interns actively seek full-time jobs when they are close to
graduation (Gault, Redington, & Schlager, 2000). It is natural that
some interns desire job offers from the internship host organiza-
tions. Likewise, for host organizations, interns are an ideal pool of
job candidates, because they are relatively well educated and have
acquired a substantial amount of organization-specific knowledge
from actually working in the host organizations. While the benefits
of realistic job preview programs for applicants are known (Phil-
lips, 1998), previewing applicants is equally important. Internships
can be characterized as an elongated type of work sample test that
provides opportunities for interns and organizations to obtain
realistic information and to evaluate each other before making
long-term commitments. In this sense, internship can be viewed as
an extended recruitment and selection process.
Compared with other recruitment and selection approaches,
internship is unique in that it is a relatively typical performance
situation. According to Sackett et al. (1988), in a typical perfor-
mance situation, performers are normally not attuned to the fact
that they are being evaluated, are not explicitly instructed to
perform their best, and are observed over an extended time. Interns
and organizational representatives are less pressured to act but
rather to perform the real tasks at hand. Internship allows organi-
zations to evaluate interns’ abilities and motivations more accu-
rately and makes their recruitment and selection more effective.
Similarly, interns can make informed decisions and are less likely
to quit soon after being hired.

221
222 ZHAO AND LIDEN
Although internships are widely advocated and practiced, field
internship programs have been studied primarily as a component
of education or career development processes (e.g., English &
Koeppen, 1993; Knechel & Snowball, 1987). While some studies
have shown that internship experience makes students stronger
candidates in the general job market (e.g., Gault et al. 2000;
Taylor, 1988), little effort has been devoted to exploring how
internships can help interns to obtain job offers directly from host
organizations or how host organizations can convince interns to
join their ranks. An exception was a study that showed that interns
who perceive a person– organization fit are more likely to accept
job offers from the host organizations (Resick, Baltes, & Shantz,
2007). These results point to the potential salience of the process
through which organizations and interns actively manage percep-
tions of fit. In this study, we focus on the IM practices of organi-
zations and interns, and Figure 1 provides an overview of the
relationships that we examine.
Impression Management
IM is defined as one’s attempt “to control images projected in
real or imagined social interactions” (Schlenker, 1980, p. 6).
Self-promotion and ingratiation are the most frequently studied IM
tactics (Bolino, Kacmar, Turnley, & Gilstrap, 2008). Self-
promotion is a self-focused IM practice through which individuals
point out their own abilities or accomplishments in order to be seen
as competent by observers. Self-promotion can provide substantive
cues to the organization that the focal applicant can perform well
and get ahead. Ingratiation is an other-focused IM practice that
involves individuals engaging in behaviors such as flattering or
performing favors in order to elicit an attribution of likeability
from targets. Applicants often use ingratiation to build rapport and
familiarity and demonstrate that they will be able to work effec-
tively with others.
IM may be cognitively exhausting and sometimes risky if per-
ceived as insincere (Liden & Mitchell, 1988; Rudman, 1998); thus,
interns may use it only if motivated by certain goals (Metts &
Grohskopf, 2003). In support of this view, Stevens (1997) found
students use IM in interviews when they strongly desire the job.
Although some interns may have a strong job-seeking goal, some
students may take an internship to earn money or experience
novelty, with little or no intention to later join the host organiza-
tion. In the latter case, they are not likely to monitor key organi-
Interns’ IM
• Self-promotion
H1 • Ingratiation H2
Interns’ Job-seeking Job Offer
Goal
H5
H6
Application
Organization’s Intention
Retention Goal
Organizational IM
H3 • Supervisory Mentoring H4
• Openness to creativity
Figure 1. An overview of Hypotheses (H) 1– 6. IM ⫽ impression man-
agement.
zational representatives and manage others’ impressions of their
employability.
Hypothesis 1: Interns’ job-seeking goals are positively related
to their use of (a) self-promotion and (b) ingratiation.
IM can be very useful for job seekers in obtaining job offers
(Anderson, Silvester, Cunningham-Snell, & Haddleton, 1999;
Kristof-Brown, Barrick, & Franke, 2002). Interns’ effective use of
self-promotion and ingratiation may positively influence attribu-
tions regarding the interns formed by supervisors as well as their
subsequent liking of the interns. Interns’ immediate supervisors
typically either make or contribute heavily in decisions concerning
whether to extend job offers to new employees. Thus, we expected
to find that interns who engaged in self-promotion and ingratiation
directed at their supervisors would be more likely to receive job
offers. However, in order to more accurately assess the effects of
IM, we needed to consider interns’ job performance (cf. Wayne &
Ferris, 1990). While performance is usually a legitimate selection
criterion, hiring decisions are complex and do not rely on any
single factor. IM may influence decision makers’ perceptions on a
broad range of important factors such as ambition, interpersonal
skills, or general fit. Thus, we believed such effects to be unique
and to extend beyond the impact of interns’ in-role job perfor-
mance.
Hypothesis 2: Interns’ (a) self-promotion and (b) ingratiation
are positively related to the likelihood of job offers, after the
effects of interns’ job performance have been controlled.
Organizational IM is “any action purposefully designed and
carried out to influence an audience’s perceptions of an organiza-
tion” (Elsbach, Sutton, & Principe, 1998, p. 68). Unlike applicant
IM, organizational IM has received little attention (Bolino et al.,
2008). Highhouse, Brooks, and Gregarus (2009) integrated prior
findings and proposed a model on the relationship between orga-
nizational IM and corporate reputation. In this model, building an
excellent employer image is important because it helps the forma-
tion of a respectable overall corporate reputation. But how can
organizations build and manage an impressive employer image?
Highhouse et al. (2009) speculated that organizations can directly
manipulate both symbolic cues through advertising and substan-
tive cues through human capital investment. They did not specify
what exact human capital investment approaches could be used.
We have supplemented Highhouse et al. (2009)’s conceptual
model of organizational IM by presenting two specific human
capital investment approaches—supervisory mentoring and open-
ness to interns’ creativity—and have provided an empirical test of
their effectiveness in attracting prospective employees.
Mentoring involves the sponsorship of a more experienced
individual who is willing to give time, interest, and emotional
support over an extended period to help the professional devel-
opment and career advancement of a junior-level person or
protégé. Feldman, Folks, and Turnley (1999) reported that good
mentoring can enhance interns’ learning as well as their satisfac-
tion. While interns may receive mentoring from individuals within
or outside the organization, we limited our study scope to super-
visory mentoring because supervisors are official organizational
representatives and high-quality supervisory mentoring is easily
 INTERNSHIP
attributable to the organization, thus helping to build a positive
organizational image among prospective applicants. Openness to
interns’ creativity represents another human capital investment
tactic that an organization can use to enhance its image as a good
employer. Interns come from colleges and bring their newly ac-
quired knowledge and ideas to the host organization, and it is
common for them to challenge the status quo regarding work
procedures and business decisions (Taylor, 1988). We contend that
organizations wishing to establish a good employer image in the
eyes of interns need to listen to and show interest in their creativ-
ity, because this demonstrates that the organization is sensitive,
open minded, and willing to provide employees opportunities for
learning and growth.
Supervisory mentoring and openness to interns’ creativity may
come at a cost to organizations, while producing little or no quick
economic return. It is very likely that organizations are motivated
to provide such human capital investments and build their em-
ployer image only if the organizations have strong retention goals,
defined as the intention to retain future employees from the pool of
interns. Some organizations may not be interested in retaining
interns; for example, they may use interns as inexpensive or free
labor. For those organizations, it is not cost efficient to provide
high-quality supervisory mentoring or encourage interns’ attempts
to challenge existing routines.
Hypothesis 3: Organizations’ retention goals are positively
related to their use of (a) supervisory mentoring and (b)
openness to interns’ creativity.
Organizational IM can help attract targeted job candidates
(Avery & McKay, 2006), but what organizational characteristics
contribute to the formation of a positive employer image? We
contend that it depends on applicants’ needs and preferences.
Because interns are at an early stage in their career with little work
experience, they value opportunities to learn essential technical
and career-related skills. A carefully designed internship program,
consisting of quality mentoring from the supervisor and a support-
ive work environment that fosters creativity, conveys a strong
message to interns that the organization is willing to invest in the
human capital of junior employees and help them grow. This in
turn enhances interns’ interest in and attraction to the organization.
Because interns usually return to school after completing their
internships and do not fully engage in the job decision process
until they are close to graduation, we assessed interns’ application
intentions (and subsequently validated these intentions with actual
job offer acceptance data collected from a subset of our sample).
Hypothesis 4: Organizations’ (a) supervisory mentoring and
(b) openness to interns’ creativity are positively related to
interns’ application intentions.
Moderation Process
Researchers (e.g., Bolino et al., 2008; Gordon, 1996) reviewing
IM literature have stressed the interactive nature of IM and have
advocated incorporation of both the actor and the target into
research studies to explore the full process of IM. Gordon (1996)
indicated that it is especially valuable to examine target-specific
characteristics as moderators of the relationship between actors’
223
IM and targets’ reactions. We have responded by exploring the
potential moderating effect of the targets’ goals on the effective-
ness of both interns’ and organizational IM.
Although interns may attempt to influence their supervisors’
hiring decisions, interns might misperceive the goals of the orga-
nization because organizations may in fact sponsor internship
programs to serve other goals. If organizations accept interns
instead of hiring permanent workers simply because they are
underresourced or prefer to use free labor, in either case producing
a low retention goal, the effectiveness of interns’ self-promotion or
ingratiation may be de facto irrelevant with respect to job offers. In
such situations, no matter how well interns use IM tactics in
interactions with their supervisors, it will be unlikely for interns to
change organizational policy and obtain an offer.
Hypothesis 5: Organizations’ retention goals moderate (a) the
relation of self-promotion to the likelihood of job offers and
(b) the relation of ingratiation to the likelihood of job offers
such that these relations are weaker when retention goals are
weak.
Likewise, the effects of organizations’ human capital investment
could turn out to be salient only to interns who have showed initial
interest in joining the organizations. Such organizational IM can
reinforce the positive attitudes among those interns and increase
their satisfaction and attachment to their organizations. If those
interns find out during the internship that the organization is not
willing to help junior employees learn and grow, they will become
disappointed and withdraw their initial interest to join. However,
some interns may have already planned to join an organization that
is located closer to their families or in another industry, and such
motives will outweigh the impacts of their internship experiences.
For interns who are not interested in permanent jobs with the host
organizations, organizations’ investment in interns’ human capital
may simply help interns learn general technical knowledge and
career skills, which will benefit the interns when they apply for
positions in other organizations. In some cases, the more interns
are invested, the more confident they may become in joining other
organizations.
Hypothesis 6: Interns’ job-seeking goals moderate (a) the
relation between supervisory mentoring and application in-
tentions and (b) the relation between openness and applica-
tion intentions, such that the relations are weaker when job-
seeking goals are weak.
Method
Procedures and Sample of the Full Study
We recruited interns to complete web surveys at three time
points, and those who finished three surveys were rewarded with
$10 for their time. Qualified Time 1 (T1) subjects were students
who had received an internship offer but had not yet started their
internship. We recruited T1 subjects by posting a recruitment ad on
the e-announcement board of a large public university in the
Midwest of the United States once every 2 weeks for a period of
6 months. The T1 survey contained measures on the students’
job-seeking goals, starting and ending dates of their internships,
224 ZHAO AND LIDEN
and their demographic data, as well as their e-mail addresses so
that they could be reached later. A total of 481 valid responses
were recorded at T1. The T2 survey link was sent to each subject
about 2 weeks after his or her internship starting date. The survey
contained measures of interns’ IM practices and perceived orga-
nizational IM practices. We also asked respondents to provide their
supervisors’ e-mail or mail addresses on a voluntary basis. We
assured them that their supervisors would not know their responses
and that their supervisors’ participation (or refusal) would not
affect the rewards they could receive. A total of 407 interns
provided valid T2 responses, among which 210 provided their
supervisors’ contact information. The T3 survey link was sent to
each intern about a week after the ending date of his or her
internship. The T3 survey contained measures of application in-
tentions and job offers, and 365 interns provided valid responses.
We directly invited supervisors to participate in the research
within 3 days after we received the interns’ T2 response. The
survey contained questions on the organization’s retention goal
and interns’ performance. A reminder was sent if no response was
received in 2 weeks. A total of 128 supervisors provided re-
sponses, among which 122 intern–supervisor dyads were matched
and were used for the subsequent analyses. A one-way multivariate
analysis of variance showed T1 interns included in the analyses
were not different from those not included in terms of gender, age,
time until graduation, or job-seeking goal.
Of the 122 interns included in the study, 63% were men, 92%
were enrolled in undergraduate programs, and 91% took the in-
ternship voluntarily (i.e., not mandated by their college). Their
average age was 22.5 years. About 40% were majoring in
engineering-related fields, and 35% of them were majoring in
business-related areas. Fifty-two percent of the interns were paid.
The average hours worked per week was 36.3. The interns were
about 9 months from graduation at T1, and the average length of
their internships was 2.5 months. Of the 122 supervisors, 71%
were men; their average age was 40.5 years, and their average
tenure at their organization was 12.2 years.
Measures
We created three new scales—Job-Seeking Goal, Organiza-
tional Retention Goal, and Openness to Creativity—for this study.
Items were generated after we interviewed three students with past
internship experiences and were reviewed by two business faculty
members for their content and face validity. Employing an inde-
pendent sample of 147 undergraduate students, we found that the
items represented unique constructs and were reliable.
Internship goals. We requested would-be interns to rate four
items about their job-seeking goal at T1 on a 7-point scale (1 ⫽ not
accurate at all, 7 ⫽ extremely accurate). An example item is “My
primary goal for this internship is to secure a permanent job offer
from the host organization.” Supervisors reported their organiza-
tional retention goals with four items on a 7-point Likert scale (1 ⫽
strongly disagree, 7 ⫽ strongly agree) at T2. An example item is
“Our organization uses internships to identify ideal candidates for
full-time positions.”
IM practices. For organizational IM, six items from the Su-
pervisory Mentoring Scale of Tepper (1995) were used. Interns
were asked to report their perceptions of their supervisors on a
7-point scale (1 ⫽ never, 7 ⫽ always). An example item is “To
what extent does your supervisor give or recommend you for
assignments that help you meet new colleagues?” The other orga-
nizational IM measure is the Openness to Creativity Scale, which
measures the organization’s efforts to be open and receptive to
interns’ creativity and challenges to the status quo. We took one
item from Taylor’s (1988)’s measure of “conflict with the status
quo procedures” (p. 396), and we wrote three items. Interns were
asked to rate each statement on a 7-point Likert scale (1 ⫽ strongly
disagree, 7 ⫽ strongly agree). A sample item is “I get credit for
pointing out more effective work procedures.” For interns’ IM, we
used the IM scale developed by Bolino and Turnley (1999) to ask
interns at T2 the extent to which they engaged in specific IM
behaviors during their internships (1 ⫽ never, 7 ⫽ always). A
sample self-promotion item is “Making your supervisor aware of
your unique talents or qualifications,” and a sample ingratiation
item is “Doing personal favors for your supervisor to show him or
her that you are friendly.”
Dependent variables. We measured interns’ application in-
tentions at T3 with three items adapted from Turban and Keon
(1993). Interns were asked to report their intentions to apply to the
organization on a 7-point Likert scale (1 ⫽ extremely unlikely, 7 ⫽
extremely likely). An example item is “How likely is it that you are
going to apply for a permanent job in this organization?” We also
collected job offer outcomes at T3 by asking interns a single
question concerning whether their host organizations offered them
or explicitly promised to offer them a permanent job after their
graduation, and interns could choose either “yes” (coded as 1) or
“no” (coded as 0). We used application intentions and promised
job offers instead of actual application or job offers in testing
hypotheses because interns and organizations may not have made
actual decisions regarding application or job offers when the
students completed internships. Approximately 1 year after most
T1 data had been collected, we e-mailed 48 interns who had
graduated from their programs and asked them whether they
actually had applied to the organization in which they interned and
whether the organization actually had made them an offer. Of these
48 interns, 27 replied, for a response rate of 56%. The correlation
between application intentions and actual applications was .84, and
the correlation between the job offers measure in the study and the
actual job offers was .82, suggesting that the application intentions
and promised job offers used in this study reasonably represent the
actual decisions of each party.
Control variables. To show the unique effects of IM, we
controlled interns’ performance, which was measured at T2 using
the seven-item in-role job performance scale developed by Wil-
liams and Anderson (1991). An example item is “This intern
adequately completed assigned duties.” Supervisors were asked to
rate their interns on a 7-point Likert scale (1 ⫽ strongly disagree,
7 ⫽ strongly agree). Because the effectiveness of IM can differ
across genders (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2007), we recorded interns’
gender at T1 (male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0) and included it in our
analyses.
Results
Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and internal
reliabilities of our variables, as well as the intercorrelations among
variables. The mean of organizations’ retention goals was 5.28,
and the mean of interns’ job-seeking goals was 5.73, both on the
 INTERNSHIP 225

Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations, and Reliabilities of Study Variables

Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

1. Retention goal 5.28 1.60 (.92)

2. Job-seeking goal 5.73 0.95 .48ⴱⴱ (.75)
3. Supervisory mentoring 4.73 1.15 .18ⴱ .16 (.90)
4. Openness to creativity 4.93 1.09 .21ⴱ .47ⴱⴱ .38ⴱⴱ (.69)
5. Self-promotion 5.09 1.39 .21ⴱ .30ⴱⴱ .64ⴱⴱ .39ⴱⴱ (.90)
6. Ingratiation 3.89 1.43 .23ⴱ .38ⴱⴱ .49ⴱⴱ .16 .63ⴱⴱ (.88)
7. Sexa 0.59 0.49 .07 .04 .09 ⫺.01 .05 .09 (—)
8. Time until graduation 8.92 6.34 ⫺.11 ⫺.09 .06 ⫺.12 ⫺.03 ⫺.01 .03 (—)
9. Paid 0.55 0.50 ⫺.06 ⫺.05 ⫺.15 ⫺.02 ⫺.22ⴱ ⫺.10 .02 ⫺.04 (—)
10. Business major 0.35 0.48 .04 .04 .01 .05 .00 .00 ⫺.01 .18ⴱ ⫺.02 (—)
11. Science/engineering major 0.45 0.50 .08 .07 .05 .02 .10 .09 .19ⴱ ⫺.15 ⫺.17 ⫺.63ⴱⴱ (—)
12. Intern job performance 5.80 0.95 .27ⴱⴱ .09 .14 .28ⴱⴱ .26ⴱⴱ .21ⴱ .05 ⫺.08 ⫺.11 .08 ⫺.03 (.73)
13. Application intention 5.09 1.41 .17 .30ⴱⴱ .22ⴱ .25ⴱⴱ .34ⴱⴱ .33ⴱⴱ ⫺.03 .06 .01 .07 .03 .03 (.97)
ⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ
14. Job offer 0.60 0.49 ⫺.03 .18 .47 .32 .42 .42 .20ⴱ .04 ⫺.04 ⫺.06 ⫺.03 .21ⴱ .06 (—)

Note. N ⫽ 122. Internal reliabilities are in parentheses.

a
Male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01.

high end of the 7-point scales, suggesting that generally host
organizations are interested in hiring and interns are interested in
job seeking. About 60% of the interns reported receiving job offers
or explicit promises of job offers from the organizations in which
they interned after the internships ended, supporting the notion that
internships are used for recruitment and selection purposes. With
respect to IM, interns tended to use self-promotion more often than
ingratiation, t(121) ⫽ 10.91, p ⬍ .01. In Table 1, we also report
interns’ time until graduation, their academic majors, and whether
they were paid. These were not included as controls in the tests of
hypotheses because they were not significantly related to our
dependent variables.
We used hierarchical regression to test Hypotheses 1a and 1b
regarding the effects of job-seeking goals on interns’ IM practices,
and the results are shown in Table 2. We entered control variables
in Step 1 and job-seeking goals in Step 2. Interns’ job-seeking
goals at T1 had significant effects on their use of self-promotion
(␤ ⫽ .30) and ingratiation (␤ ⫽ .38) at T2, supporting Hypotheses
1a and 1b, respectively. Interns interested in getting a job offer
from their host organization are more likely to emphasize their
abilities and accomplishments to their supervisors and to compli-
ment and do favors for their supervisors. Table 3 shows the
regression results regarding the effect of applicants’ IM on job
Table 2
Regression Results of Self-Promotion and Ingratiation on
Job-Seeking Goal (Hypothesis 1)
offers, with the effects of performance controlled. Performance
had a positive effect on the likelihood of an offer in Step 1, but
self-promotion, Exp(B) ⫽ 1.51, and ingratiation, Exp(B) ⫽ 1.55,
had unique effects when entered in Step 2, supporting Hypotheses
2a and 2b. Interns who used self-promotion had an additional 51%
chance of receiving job offers compared with those who did not
and interns who used ingratiation had an additional 55% chance.
Table 4 shows the regression results of retention goal on orga-
nizational IM. Organizations’ retention goals were significantly
related to their use of supervisory mentoring (␤ ⫽ .18) and
openness to interns’ creativity (␤ ⫽ .21) at T2, supporting Hy-
potheses 3a and 3b, respectively. Organizations interested in hiring
were more likely to encourage supervisors to mentor interns and
more likely to be open to interns’ creative initiatives. Table 5
shows the regression results of interns’ application intentions on
organizational IM. Contrary to our expectation, supervisory men-
toring at T2 was not significantly related to interns’ application
intentions at T3. Hypothesis 4a was not supported. We found
openness to creativity at T2, consistent with Hypothesis 4b, to be
Table 3
Logistic Regression Results of Job Offer on Self-Promotion and
Ingratiation (Hypothesis 2)
Dependent variable: Job offer
Variable Step 1 Step 2

Self-promotion Ingratiation Sexa 2.29ⴱ 2.39ⴱ

Performance 1.58ⴱ 1.36
Variable Step 1 Step 2 Step 1 Step 2 Self-promotion 1.51ⴱ
Ingratiation 1.55ⴱ
Sexa .05 .04 .09 .08 Nagelkerke R2 .11 .33
Job-seeking goal .30ⴱⴱ .38ⴱⴱ Chi-square test 10.06ⴱ 33.92ⴱⴱ
R2 .00 .10 .01 .15
F 0.25 6.14ⴱⴱ 1.08 10.65ⴱⴱ Note. N ⫽ 122. Logistic regression odds ratios, Exp(B), are reported.
a
Male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0.
Note. N ⫽ 122. Standardized betas (␤) are reported. Nagelkerke R2 is a goodness-of-fit measure for a logistic regression model that
a
Male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0. approximates the R2 for linear regression; it similarly ranges from 0 to 1.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01. ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01.
226 ZHAO AND LIDEN
Table 4
Regression Results of Supervisory Mentoring and Openness on
Retention Goal (Hypothesis 3)
Openness to
Supervisory mentoring creativity
Variable Step 1 Step 2 Step 1 Step 2
Sexa .09 .08 ⫺.01 ⫺.02
Retention goal .18ⴱ .21ⴱ
R2 .01 .04 .00 .04
F 1.06 3.15ⴱ .01 3.21ⴱ
Note. N ⫽ 122. Standardized betas (␤) are reported.
a
Male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05.
positively related to interns’ application intentions at T3 (␤ ⫽ .19).
The more inclined the organization was to listen to interns’ cre-
ativity, the more likely interns were to indicate that they intended
to apply.
To test the hypothesized moderation effects of retention goal, we
entered control variables and main effects first and then the product
terms in the second step. The results are presented in Table 6.
The product terms between retention goal and each of the interns’ IM
practices (i.e., self-promotion and ingratiation) were not significant,
thus Hypotheses 5a and 5b were not supported. Similarly, we tested
moderation effects of job-seeking goals and show the results in
Table 7. The product term between mentoring and job-seeking goals
had a significant coefficient, supporting Hypothesis 6a. The moder-
ating effect is illustrated in Figure 2, with 1 standard deviation above
and 1 standard deviation below the mean of job-seeking goal defined
as “high” and “low” job-seeking goals, respectively (Aiken & West,
1991). When interns’ job-seeking goals at T1 were strong, supervi-
sory mentoring at T2 had a positive effect on interns’ application
intentions at T3. However, when interns’ did not intend to seek a job
in the host organization, supervisory mentoring had a slightly negative
effect on interns’ application intentions. For openness to creativity, the
product term was nonsignificant; thus, Hypotheses 6b was not sup-
ported.
Discussion
Our article represents an early attempt to highlight the salience
of internship for organizations’ attempts to recruit and select talent
as well as for applicants’ needs to find employment in selected
organizations. Internship provides organizations and prospective
applicants with ample opportunities to get to know and to impress
each other in a more natural setting. It is interesting to note that
while interns wishing to be hired were not different in their job
performance from other interns, they were more likely to engage in
IM, and the effect of job performance on the likelihood of job
offers was no longer significant when considered in multivariate
models containing IM. In essence, self-promotion and ingratiation
dominated performance in the explanation of variance in job
offers.
This study enriches literature in three ways. First, theory on IM
is enhanced by our clarification of the role of context in the use and
the effectiveness of IM. Among the two applicant IM tactics,
interns use ingratiation less frequently than self-promotion, but
ingratiation is rather effective in producing job offers, which seems
surprising given recent findings from job interviews research. For
example, Chen, Lee, and Yeh (2008) and Levashina and Campion
(2007) reported correlations of only .10 and .05, respectively,
between interviewees’ ingratiation and job offers, while Stevens
and Kristof’s (1995) results revealed a slightly negative correlation
for the same relationship. In contrast, the correlation between
interns’ ingratiation and job offers in the current investigation was
.42. A possible explanation for the difference is that ingratiation,
when based on little familiarity between the interviewee and
interviewer, may be perceived as obtrusive or insincere. Interns are
more familiar with their supervisors than interviewees are with
interviewers, and the frequent day-to-day interactions over the
span of a few weeks or months provide interns with many oppor-
tunities to ingratiate themselves with their supervisors unobtru-
sively. Our results suggest that performance situations may play a
role because they vary in the degree to which targets are suscep-
tible to the influence of IM.
Second, we investigated applicant and organizational IM simul-
taneously, and our results revealed that the use of IM involves the
interplay between two parties within a rich contextual setting, such
that one party’s goals could moderate the effectiveness of the other
party’s IM. Bolino et al. (2008) reviewed IM research from the last
20 years and called for research into IM practices by organizations
and by employees and applicants as well as the interactions be-
tween the two parties. We feel that our work represents a timely
response to that call. While both interns and organizations use IM,
we found only a small portion of organizational IM could be
explained by organizations’ retention goals, which may reflect the
additional complexities of organizational IM. For example, orga-
nizations are represented by different agents, such as executives,
spokespersons, recruiters, supervisors, and employees. Due to the
differing perspectives of all these agents, orchestrating them to
display the desired organizational image consistently to outsiders
is rather difficult. Research on organizational IM is just emerging
(Highhouse et al., 2009), and we encourage more studies to further
extend the understanding of organizational IM.
Finally, our findings can also inform the mentoring literature.
We studied mentoring as a method of organizational IM to attract
prospective employees, as speculated in Highhouse et al. (2009).
An implicit assumption in past research is that protégés reciprocate
organizational support with intentions to stay and contribute,
Table 5
Regression Results of Application Intention on Supervisory
Mentoring and Openness to Creativity (Hypothesis 4)
Application intention
Variable Step 1 Step 2
Sexa ⫺.03 ⫺.04
Supervisory mentoring .16
Openness to creativity .19ⴱ
R2 .00 .06
F 0.08 3.57ⴱ
Note. N ⫽ 122. Standardized betas (␤) are reported.
a
Male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05.
 INTERNSHIP 227

Table 6
Logistic Regression Results of the Moderation Effects of Retention Goal (Hypothesis 5)

Dependent variable: Job offer

Moderator: Self-promotion Moderator: Ingratiation

Variable Step 1 Step 2 Step 1 Step 2

Step 1: Control & main effects

Sexa 2.61ⴱⴱ 2.63ⴱⴱ 2.41ⴱ 2.50ⴱⴱ
Performance 1.50 1.47 1.68ⴱ 1.73ⴱ
Self-promotion 2.06ⴱⴱ 20.39ⴱⴱ
Ingratiation 2.07ⴱⴱ 6.18ⴱⴱ
Retention goal 0.77 6.34 0.73 1.48
Step 2: Interaction
Self-Promotion ⫻ Retention .67
Ingratiation ⫻ Retention .82
Nagelkerke R2 .31 .40 .32 .35
Chi-square test 32.05ⴱⴱ 35.39ⴱⴱ 33.39ⴱⴱ 36.46ⴱⴱ

Note. N ⫽ 122. Logistic regression odds ratios, Exp(B), are reported. Nagelkerke R2 is a goodness-of-fit
measure for a logistic regression model that approximates the R2 for linear regression; it similarly ranges from
0 to 1.
a
Male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01.

which was challenged by our study. We found organizations’ use
of mentoring to have a weak effect on interns’ application inten-
tions, and the effect became nonsignificant when we adjusted for
the effect of openness to interns’ creativity. Further moderation
analysis showed that if interns were not interested in a permanent
job from the outset, the more supervisory mentoring they received,
the more likely it was that they intended to work elsewhere. This
phenomenon is to some extent similar to employees’ increased
turnover intentions after receiving tuition reimbursements, which
is another form of human capital investment, due to the increased
level of their marketable skills (Benson, Finegold, & Mohrman,
2004). In fact, retaining interns may be more challenging than
retaining permanent employees, because the length of internship is
prespecified, and leaving for school is the anticipated outcome
when an internship is completed. Thus, interns are less influenced
by guilt that may be associated with voluntary turnover.
Practical Implications
For employers, we recommend supplementing existing recruit-
ment and selection methods with internships to meet organiza-
tions’ staffing needs strategically. In the global economy where
competing for talent becomes a priority, internships provide a
relatively safe option in attracting potential candidates and evalu-
ating their qualifications without long-term employment obliga-
tions. For better recruitment and selection results, organizations
should be open minded and receptive toward interns’ creativity
and encourage interns to ask questions and express doubts, so that

Table 7
Regression Results of the Moderation Effects of Job-Seeking Goal (Hypothesis 6)

Dependent variable: Application intention

Mentoring Openness

Variable Step 1 Step 2 Step 1 Step 2

Step 1: Control & main effects

Sexa ⫺0.05 ⫺0.06 ⫺0.03 ⫺0.03
Mentoring 0.18ⴱ ⫺1.23ⴱ
Openness 0.14 0.32
Job-seeking goal 0.27ⴱⴱ ⫺0.68 0.24ⴱ 0.37
Step 2: Interaction
Mentoring ⫻ Job Seeking 1.84ⴱⴱ
Openness ⫻ Job Seeking ⫺0.27
2
R .10 .15 .11 .11
F 5.53ⴱⴱ 6.07ⴱⴱ 4.66ⴱⴱ 3.53ⴱⴱ

Note. N ⫽ 122. Standardized betas (␤) are reported.

a
Male ⫽ 1 and female ⫽ 0.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01.
228 ZHAO AND LIDEN
7 Second, we did not directly measure the extent to which each
6
Low Job-seeking
Application intention
5 Goal
High Job-seeking
4
Goal
3 cally test its effect on interns’ behaviors.
2
1
Low Mentoring High Mentoring
Figure 2. The moderating effect of interns’ job-seeking goals.
they feel valued. Second, while mentoring may not change the
minds of certain interns who are not interested in permanent
employment with the host organization, it would probably be
premature for organizations to conclude that supervisory mentor-
ing of interns is without value. Organizations have at least two
options to justify the costs associated with mentoring. One option
is for organizations to make their internship program an explicit
part of a multiple-hurdle selection process and accept students with
the “right” motivation from the outset into the internship program,
besides considering students’ job related skills, knowledge, and
abilities. Another approach is for organizations to continue pro-
viding supervisory mentoring to all interns and justify the cost by
focusing on the enhanced overall corporate reputation in the com-
munity, which is a valuable intangible asset over the long term and
may benefit the organization in other ways.
We highly recommend that students take internships before
graduation because participating in internships helps most of them
to obtain job offers directly from host organizations, which is in
addition to building a more marketable resume with relevant work
experience. Our study shows interns tend to use ingratiation less
than they use self-promotion. It is important for interns who wish
to join the host organizations permanently to realize that develop-
ing a good working and personal relationship with supervisors is as
important as demonstrating their technical skills and competencies
because their immediate supervisors typically make, or at least
influence, hiring decisions in their units. Interns should take ad-
vantage of the day-to-day interactions with their supervisors to
compliment their supervisors’ strengths and accomplishments, do
small favors, and express gratitude for their supervisors’ help and
support during the internship.
Limitations and Directions for Future Studies
The first limitation of this study is the level of analysis. Al-
though the intern–supervisor dyad level is appropriate because
supervisors can reasonably represent the organizations in many
aspects and two sources of data can relieve concerns of common
method variance, a cross-level analysis would be more advanta-
geous. In the future, researchers can seek the endorsement of
specific organizations in providing their structures, as well as the
contact information for hired interns and their supervisors, so that
those targeted interns and supervisors can be invited to participate
in a cross-level study.
internship is reflective of typical performance. It is possible that
some internship programs are known as part of a multiple-hurdle
selection process, thus some interns still experience evaluation
anxiety when performing. In the future, researchers may ask in-
terns to report how much they are aware that they are constantly
being evaluated and expected to do their best and could empiri-
Finally, in order to more fully integrate the study of internship
into the recruitment and selection process, we recommend that
future investigations include the process through which students
are selected as interns, where regular screening methods such as
resumes and recommendation letters may be emphasized. It would
be valuable for researchers to investigate how internship and other
recruitment and selection methods supplement each other when
organizations strive to achieve the best staffing results.
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Received November 11, 2009
Revision received August 5, 2010
Accepted August 16, 2010 䡲

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