Entrepreneurial Internship Program

For Employers

For new ventures who have not raised significant funding or generated significant revenue, who are not able to pay their interns, we offer two options:

  • During the Fall and Spring semesters, students can apply to earn graded course credit for an internship that does not offer cash compensation. See the website for the ENT198 Entrepreneurial Internship course for details.
  • During the summer, DEC offers a limited number of Internship Grants through the career office that pays $4,500 per student for a 10-week summer internship.

Step 1: Check eligibility 

Following are the employer eligibility requirements for the Entrepreneurial Internship Program.

  • The company must be less than 10 years old.
  • The company must not have raised more than $5 Million cumulatively since inception.
  • The company must have between 1-30 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employees.
  • The company must commit to providing 1×1 mentorship to the student on a weekly basis.
  • The company agrees that the internship will serve as a learning opportunity for the student. Please consult the “Paid and Unpaid Internships” section of Tufts’ Employer Policies page to ensure you are in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

For employers exploring student interns who are taking course credit for the engagement, please also review the course syllabus to ensure you understand our expectations for you, and for your student intern.

Step 2: Post a student job

  • Create a job listing, preferably on Tufts’s Handshake platform, which gets the best circulation with Tufts students and is the official job listing platform supported by the Tufts Career Office.
  • Follow these instructions to post a job on Handshake. Handshake is Tufts’ job listing platform for students. Handshake partners with SIFT and Persona on their employer validation process which may take a few days to complete.
  • Contact Sue Atkins, Associate Director of Employer Relations at Tufts to expedite the process. (You can also use a link to a job listing on a platform of your choice, but Handshake has far better circulation within Tufts so it is worth the investment.)
  • With a Handshake link and/or your own job listing link, you can now submit the internship job listings on our curated job list below. Please do so by February 28, 2024.
READ HANDSHAKE INSTRUCTIONS
EXAMPLE JOB POSTING
POST A JOB

Step 3: Interview and hire intern

  • Arrange an interview with the Tufts student candidate according to your company’s normal hiring process.
  • For the Fall and Spring course credit option: Extend an offer to selected student interns, and complete the employer intake form.
  • For the summer internship grant option: Extend an offer to selected student interns, including emailing a formal offer letter electronically to the student.

Step 4: Confirm acceptance and start date

  • For the Fall and Spring course credit option: Confirm with the student about the start and end dates for the semester.
  • For the summer internship grant option: Communicate with students by early April on grant funding. Confirm start date with student intern by mid-April.