News You Can Use: New grads will work for ... well, work

Although employers have maintained recruiting college graduates for full-time hire, companies are beginning to discover that hiring new grads as interns can yield a high return in the form of cheap -- ahem, cost effective -- labor.

According to a recent study by Intern Bridge, a Massachusetts-based college recruiting consulting firm, 70% of students would accept less pay if it meant a more auspicious work experience.

"In the past, companies hosted internship programs as a recruiting tool. Organizations are quickly realizing that internships can also ease their workforce dilemmas in a tough economy,” maintains Intern Bridge founder Richard Bottner.

While growth in college recruiting for full-time hires is expected to remain flat in 2009, the use of internships is expected to rise as organizations recognize the advantages to of hiring a newly educated workforce at a reduced cost.

The 2008 study interviewed 42,000 students from 400 universities. --Kathleen Koster

Tip of the Day

For hiring managers: Who needs costly background check products when there’s MySpace and Facebook? CareerBuilder finds that 22% of hiring managers use social networking sites to check up on potential employees, up from 11%; in 2006. For job hunters: Clean up your online presence; 34% of respondents say they found content or information that caused them to remove the candidate from consideration, and 24% found content that gave one candidate an edge and enforced their desire to hire the person.