Upward Mobility: A diversity internship program for the mobility industry!

Intern programs are extremely valuable to many companies. In fact, in a recent NACE quick poll, four out of five employers said their internship program provided the best return on investment as a recruiting strategy, giving them the best means for identifying and building relationships with potential employees. Not long ago, we shared that Intern programs are looking at a record year! Employers expect to increase their intern hiring by 9.1% for the 2022-23 academic year over the previous year. 

Internships are an effective way to build a diverse talent pipeline for the future. Companies that invest in internships are able to develop and nurture relationships with students and recent graduates from a wide range of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences. This provides a pool of diverse candidates who can bring fresh perspectives and help drive innovation within a company. 

In the case of Upward Mobility, the intern program is not only focused on helping participating companies looking to increase their diversity but is actually aimed at improving diversity across the entire global mobility industry! Like Worldwide ERC and all of the other participating companies, Plus Relocation is proud to participate in this amazing intern program. 

Co-founded by former Worldwide ERC Board Chair Andrew Walker (Global Total Rewards Leader at EY) and Dwellworks President and CEO Bob Rosing in 2021, Upward Mobility partners with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions to match talented students with organizations in the mobility industry for paid summer internships. In doing so, the program seeks to develop a more diverse and inclusive talent pipeline, while also offering interested students of color the opportunity to learn more about our talent mobility industry.

Building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive company and mobility industry is critical to what we do at Plus, and the Upward Mobility internship program is just one of many ongoing conversations that we are having as an organization committed to the principles of DEIB. Per Eleven Plus, across all industries and sectors, there is a well-documented lack of access to formative work experiences for students of color that perpetuates inequality and limits their post-graduation success. Providing opportunities for underrepresented groups to work in the field of employee mobility lifts us all and creates a more equitable society. Creating these opportunities exclusively for this targeted student population helps to level the playing field and positively impacts ongoing career success.

Because more and more of our client mobility programs are being asked to support their own corporate intern programs, Plus has gotten much more involved in supporting them too. In fact, we have developed a new tool for managing intern programs and the overall intern experience. Point C Jumpstart is a technology platform designed specifically for managing internship programs after an offer has been accepted. Let us know if you would like to arrange a demo!  

In the meantime, we will be enjoying our time with Rohan Ponnusamy as he spends his summer learning more about the "magic" that happens within relocation management and all of the other types of companies (our partners and friends) in the village of talent mobility that it takes for effectively supporting both those employees that are moving around the world and those companies that are sponsoring and supporting those moves! His internship experience at Plus has been designed to provide exposure to every department to get a holistic view of the industry versus the type of experiences that many traditional internships have provided where it ties the intern to a specific department and they end up doing the tasks others don’t want to do. Welcome Rohan! Look for a post from Rohan about his experience closer to National Intern Day on July 27th!