Which one best suits you

Real employer projects for every student, not just the well connected few

A project-based digital internship designed to improve graduate outcomes, where students are trained in AI and consulting skills, and tackle real challenges set by our employer partner network.

Speak with an expert

+38%

AI skills

+35%

Consulting skills

+22%

Communication

+20%

Problem solving

+20%

Career confidence

+54

Net Promoter Score (University of Liverpool Micro Internship)

+38%

AI skills

+35%

Consulting skills

+22%

Communication

+20%

Problem solving

+20%

Career confidence

+54

Net Promoter Score (University of Liverpool Micro Internship)

Designed to meet work-based commitments

A Micro Internship experience supports multiple institutional priorities.

Widening participation

With more undergraduates balancing part-time work alongside their studies, a flexible virtual format fits around their existing commitments.

Graduate outcomes

Students complete their experience with a case study, a finished product, personalised feedback and a certificate visible to hiring partners.

Enrolments

Convert curious young people into applications by positioning your university as one invested in graduate employability.

Student experience

Students work on live employer briefs and employers get access to the solutions they propose.

How Micro Internships work

Students are trained in key consulting and AI skills, with submitted work graded against real-world standards, in a timeline that's fully flexible to suit your needs. You receive both qualitative and quantitative reporting on your cohort's participation and outcomes.

Learn

Students get hands-on learning with AI tools, consulting models and the critical skills that are transferable across any industry.

Try

Students pick a brief from our employer network (or your employer partners if you'd prefer), solving a real business challenge while receiving inbox notifications from their 'manager' along the way. Work is then graded against professional standards.

Reflect

Their project is showcased on their student profile, giving them a working prototype to share with our hiring partners.

Why AI and consulting skills?

These areas require a mix of hard data literacy, solution-solving and soft interpersonal skills. The ability to break down a problem and develop a solution is a skill that is transferable, regardless of the path they decide to take.

Structured problem-solving

Breaking a challenge into clear, testable parts.

Data literacy and analysis

Reading evidence and drawing sound conclusions.

Effective communication

Explaining findings clearly to different audiences.

Project management

Planning and delivering work to a deadline.

Adaptability

Adjusting an approach as new information comes in.

Relationship and trust building

Working well with people outside your own team.

Real challenges from real employers

Students don't just learn theory — they choose from live employer briefs and leave with tangible experience of having worked on a real project.

Students practise their pitch before it gets to you

Students pitch their project to our AI Coach and get guided feedback, checking they've thought through all their findings. By the time the pitch reaches you, it's told confidently and assuredly.

Hear what students had to say about their experience

A Micro Internship in practice

The University of Liverpool sought to extend access to high-quality work experience to more students, earlier in their degree, and in a format that could scale across disciplines.

Our partnership with Springpod has positioned us well to respond to the evolving demands of the higher education sector, enabling more students to access meaningful, real-world experiences. Through this collaboration, we have developed innovative solutions tailored to our unique environment that address key challenges faced by our students, employer partners, and wider University. We are committed to delivering impactful outcomes for the future."

Iwan Williams
Director of Careers at the University of Liverpool

Interested in seeing how this might work for your students?

Speak with an expert

Know if candidates are career ready before you even interview them

A bespoke, branded Micro Internship puts your real business challenges in front of motivated students training in AI and consulting skills, run end-to-end by Springpod, so you get a genuine pipeline of talent and visibility without the overhead of running it yourself.

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Designed to meet your priorities

A Micro Internship programme is built around your business and run entirely by Springpod, supporting multiple priorities at once.

Talent pipeline

See exactly how candidates think, structure a problem and pitch a solution, over weeks of real work, and get a direct route to the ones worth talking to next.

Employer brand

Put your organisation and your challenges in front of thousands of engaged students, without running an in-person placement scheme or open day.

Social impact

Give students who might not otherwise get this kind of access a genuine taste of working with you, supporting your social mobility and CSR goals.

Low admin, real involvement

Springpod recruits, trains, coaches and grades. Your team's time goes into the parts that matter: setting the challenge and reviewing the work that reaches you.

How your Micro Internship programme works

Give us your challenges

Tell us who they're for, what's broken, what a good solution looks like. We shape them into proper briefs and build your branded programme around them.

Students take on your brief

They move through structured stages (mapping the challenge, prototyping an approach, then building it out properly), coached throughout so what reaches you has already been pressure-tested.

Review

The strongest solutions come to you as finished pitches and case studies. You give feedback, and where a student stands out, there's a direct route to a further conversation, an interview, or a hire.

Why employers run a Micro Internship

What you get out of it:

Real hiring signal

How a candidate thinks and works, not just what their CV says.

A direct route to standout students

From feedback through to interviews or hires.

Employer brand reach

Reach at scale, without the cost of an in-person programme.

Reporting

See how your programme performed and who engaged with it.

In good company

Organisations including Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Siemens, Aldi, Kyndryl, Lenovo and DEFRA have already used Micro Internships to reach their team goals.

Every pitch is coached before it reaches you

Students rehearse their pitch with our AI Coach first, working through guided feedback until they've thought it through properly. By the time it lands with your team, it's considered, well-structured, and worth your time to review.

Got a challenge you want a young person to solve?

We also run Micro Internships directly with universities, who are always looking for genuine employer briefs to give their students. If you've got a real challenge but don't need a full programme of your own, submit it and we'll match it into a live, university-run Micro Internship.

Submit a brief