A common complaint heard from cooperative management today is finding experienced people to hire with the knowledge of cooperatives. 他们通常雇用具有公司业务知识的人, but not cooperative business knowledge and end up using time and money to train them. 目前, five colleges/universities in North Dakota offer a cooperatives course--North Dakota State University, 狄金森州立大学, 湖区州立大学, 迈诺特州立大学, 以及北达科他大学. Students are being drawn from the business, agribusiness, and other departments. 学生们正在学习合作社, 建立合作社的步骤, 以及合作社和公司的财务差异.
通过给这些学生和其他人提供实习机会, the cooperative can bring new talent into the company and work with the students without the obligation of employment. 学生可以满足短期额外援助的需要, 并带来热情和当前行业知识. 举个例子, one area Cooperative offered an internship to a student to re-design their website with the things the members wanted to have Internet access to. 最终的结果正是合作社所希望的.
为什么合作社应该有兴趣提供实习机会? Perhaps the following statistics will shine some interesting light on reasons why. 当调查, the employers in the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2003 survey said they considered their own internship programs as the most cost-effective method for recruiting new college graduates for full-time, 永久职位. These businesses reported that 32 percent of new college hires come from their internship programs. NACEs Job Outlook Fall Preview survey revealed that employers are expected to hire 3.2003年的大学毕业生减少了6%. The only region projecting a positive outlook for college hiring was the Midwest. 这个地区的员工预计招聘11人.今年(2002-2003)的大学毕业生比去年增加了2%. 前景最差的是西方，下降了15个百分点.7%.
