The Student Campus Partnership (SCP)

• An intern can bring new ideas and a fresh perspective to your area of work
• Employing an intern can provide existing team members with the chance to be involved with training and supervision
• You can increase your understanding of the student community
• Interns can help you get on top of projects and challenging tasks
• The working hours and the duration of the internship can be flexible
• Students have the opportunity to develop their employability skills in a supportive environment

• Undergraduate Students can work up to 15 hours per week during term time and full-time during vacations
• Postgraduate students can work up to 6 hours per week, sometimes more if they seek permission from their academic
• The minimum length of an internship is 36.5 hours in total or 1 week
• Students can work for the university for a maximum of 23 months

Below are examples of the total costs for employing a student through the SCP scheme.

You are welcome to contact the team directly who will be happy to provide the total costs for your particular opportunity. Email internships@exeter.ac.uk

Full-Time Summer Intern

36.5 hours per week for 4 weeks:

• Management Fee: £100
• Salary: £1,800.18 - Based on 36.5 hours per week x 4 weeks = 146 hours x £12.33 per hour.
• Apprenticeship Levy = £7.20 - Based on 0.4% of monthly wage.
• National Insurance = £143.82 - Based on £1,800.18 - £758.00 (NI threshold) =  £1,042.18 x 0.138% = £143.82.
• Total Costs: £2,051.20

36.5 hours per week for 6 weeks:

• Management Fee: £100
• Salary: £2,700.27 - Based on 36.5 hours per week x 6 weeks = 219 hrs x £12.33 per hour.
• Apprenticeship Levy = £10.80 - Based on 0.4% of monthly wage.
• National Insurance = £163.42 - Based on £1,800.18 - £758.00 (NI threshold) =  £1,042.18 x 0.138% = £143.82 + month two: £900.09  -£758.00 (NI threshold) = £142.09 x 0.138% = £19.60 
• Total Costs: £2,974.49

 35 hours per week for 4 weeks:

• Management Fee: £100
• Salary: £1,726.2 - Based on 35 hourrs per week x 4 weeks = 140 hrs x £12.33 per hour.
• Apprenticeship Levy = £6.90 - Based on 0.4% of monthly wage.
• National Insurance = £133.61 - Based on £1,710.80 - £758.00 (NI threshold) = £968.2 x 0.138% = £133.61.
• Total Costs: £1,966.71

Part-Time (Term-Time) Intern

6 hours per week for 33 weeks:

• Management Fee: £100
• Salary: £2,441.34 - Based on 6 hours per week x 33 weeks = 198 hours x £12.33 per hour.
• Apprenticeship Levy = £8.26 - Based on 0.4% of monthly wage.
• National Insurance: £0 (The interns monthly salary does not exceed the £758.00 NI threshold)
• Total Costs: £2,549.60

Management fees

The Internships Team charge a fee of £100 per internship. If more than one student is appointed to the same role, subsequent appointments are charged at £50 each.

The fee covers:

• Advertising including any support provided to create your job description, and advertising your role on Handshake, social media platforms, direct mail campaigns, and the internships bulletin.
• Managing the application process - handling general enquiries and applications.
• Contract/Agreement support – providing the internship agreements and guidance to line managers and interns for setting up e-claims.
• Support and guidance – ongoing support and guidance is provided to both students and line managers for the duration of the internship.

Extending Contracts

Extending an existing contract carries a charge of £25. These costs will be journalled by the team to the account code supplied on your vacancy/appointment form.

Rates of Pay for Students

The University has a two tier pay structure that applies to SCP internships.  The rate offered should depend on the level of responsibility and experience required to undertake the role. You can view the Tasks by Tier list for examples of the typical tasks for each tier.

• Tier 1: £12.33 per hour (£11.00 basic hourly rate + £1.33 holiday).

• Tier 2: £12.40 per hour (£11.06 basic hourly rate + £1.34 holiday).

Rates of pay are subject to annual cost of living increases.

National Insurance

• Employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) are currently based on 13.8% of pay above the salary threshold, which is revised by the Government each year.
• The current threshold is £758 which means students can be paid up to £758 per month before the employer is required to make a NI contribution.

In practice, employer National Insurance contributions are approximately 12% of salary. Further information about the contribution rates and thresholds for National Insurance can be found on the UK government’s webpages.

Apprenticeship Levy

The Apprenticeship Levy was introduced by the UK government in 2017 to fund apprenticeship training. The levy is calculated and applied at employer level (rather than employee level like National Insurance) and is 0.5% of the university’s total payroll costs, less an allowance of £15,000 per annum.

This means that a charge of 0.44% is applied to an employees pay each month. The levy applies to all employees who are paid through the main payroll and through e-claims.

• For example, if your interns' monthly pay is £295 per month, the university's levy contribution on this amount would be £1.30 (0.44% of £295).

Further information about the Apprenticeship Levy can be found on the UK government’s webpages.

Payment through eClaims or Main Payroll

Interns are paid through the eclaims system which is managed by the university's HR team, unless your student already has a job paid through the main payroll.

If employed as a part-time PTA, the student will need to be paid using the PTA103 form or any other roles using the PD103 form. All forms will need to be sent to the Pay and Benefits team at payandbenefits@exeter.ac.uk. the Internships Team will provide further guidance on appointment.

Pension

Undergraduate students can work a maximum of 15 hours per week during term time and full-time during the holidays. Full-time postgraduate students can work up to 6 hours per week until they have submitted all of their work.

Due to the cap on the working hours, interns are not eligible to join the university's pension scheme as they will not meet the criteria below. To join, an employee must be:

• Over 22 years of age
• Earning at least £787.00 per month, every month over a 3 month period.

Before the Internships Team can advertise your role, you will need to notify e-claims of your intention to recruit by completing the following steps:

1. Complete the TR2‌ Form with the details of your SCP role.  Under ‘name of worker’ you can enter ‘yet to be recruited’.
2. You can upload confirmation from your budget holder (if that is not you) to the TR2 form or email it separately to e-claims@exeter.ac.uk.  
3. Once the e-claims team has approved your job role and set it up on the system, you will receive an alert from them.
4. You can then send your completed Internal Internship Vacancy Form to internships@exeter.ac.uk and one of the team will be in touch to confirm the next steps and the timeline.

Promoting Your Vacancy

The team will advertise and promote your vacancy using:

• Handshake - the universities dedicated careers portal.
• Targeted emails to students by career sector, occupation, and discipline.
• Social media - Career Zone; Internships: LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.
• The Weekly Internships Bulletin which is sent to thousands of student subscribers.
• Employability Officers throughout the university who can promote to students.
• The 'What's On' weekly employability e-newsletter sent to all students during term-time.
• Job Fairs such as the Student Employment Fair, and the Careers and Placements Fair (Exeter), plus the Careers and Opportunities Fair (Penryn).

• Only Exeter students based in Exeter and Penryn can apply for SCP roles.
• Incoming students can apply once their offer has been confirmed.
• Students must have student-status for the duration of their internship.
• Students must be in the UK when they are working.

Right to Work explained

• All students are required to provide proof that they have permission to work in the UK before the interview and have this documentation verified by the university, if appointed
• Applicants should reside in the UK whilst undertaking the internship
• If a student is already registered on the e-claims system, they will still need to bring their evidence to interview and may have to present it again to HR, if it has been 6 months since they last presented it. 
• For more information about Right to Work please see the eClaims webpages. 

Applications

• The internships team offer a managed application process where students will apply using an application form template
• On average you can expect to receive between 5-20 applications.
• The team will check all applications meet the SCP scheme eligibility criteria and we'll let you know if any of the candidates have declared a disability
• We send all the applications by email the following working day after the closing date.

Shortlisting

• You (the recruiting manager) are responsible for shortlisting the applications. You can use the Shortlisting Scoring Grid to help you
• As the University of Exeter is a 'Disability Confident' organisation, you should interview all applicants who have declared a disability and who meet the essential criteria for the role.

Inviting to Interview

• It is recommended that you arrange your interviews as soon as possible. We tell students to expect to hear if they have been shortlisted 5 days before the scheduled interview date.
• We recommend you invite 5-6 students for interview, if possible.
• You can call candidates to book an interview time and date and follow this up with a confirmation email. You may wish to use this Invitation to interview email.
• For the candidates who have not been shortlisted for interview, please let them know as soon as possible by email. You may want to use this Not called to interview email. Alternatively the Internship Team can do this for you, if you send us the names of the candidates.
• The university requires all recruiting managers to check the students Right to Work evidence. Please read the Employer Guidance - Verifying RTW in the UK
  

Conducting the interview

• It is best practice to form an interview panel of up to three people and made up of different genders.
• You can use Guidance for interviews via video call if you are conducting interviews online
• Assess each candidate against the selection criteria published in the Internship Vacancy Form. You can use the Interview Scoring Grid to help you.
• You can use these Interview Questions or these Strengths based interview questions.
• You can also conduct a short test e.g. manipulating data in a spreadsheet or writing a short communication with a client.
• You should respond to candidates who have not been successful at interview and be willing to provide constructive feedback if requested. If this is not possible you may wish to use our standard email unsuccessful after interview.
• You will need to check the Right to Work evidence at interview. Please read Employer Guidance - Verifying RTW in the UK.

Informing interviewees the outcome of their interview

• At the end of the interview please let the interviewees know when you will be in touch to let them know the outcome of the interview. This should take place within 3 days of the interview, ideally via a phone call.
• When you contact the successful candidate to offer them the role, please ask them to confirm they would like to accept the job and agree a start date. 
• You should respond to candidates who have not been successful at interview and be willing to provide constructive feedback if requested. Inexperienced students really benefit from learning what they did well on in interview and what and how they could improve. If you thought they were appointable (just not the top candidate), please let them know.
• For further information, you can view our Guidance on Informing Candidates of Interview Outcome. 

Retaining Interview Evidence

It is a requirement for university staff to retain evidence of scoring and selection for all the candidates you interview for 6 months, after which please destroy or delete. 

References

• As the employer, it is at your discretion if you decide to take up references.  If you wish to do so, you may like to use the Reference Template.  
• Please ensure that any references not required after appointment, are destroyed or retained, as applicable, in accordance with GDPR and the University's Retention Schedules

Once you have selected your Intern, you will need to let the Internships Team know by completing the SCP Appointment Form‌. We will then issue the Internship Agreement to you and your intern via Adobe Sign.  The Internship Agreement will also act as the Contract of Employment.

What if you have a student in mind and don't want to advertise?

At the university internship opportunities should be openly advertised, unless you have permission of the relevant Human Resources Business Partner (HRBP) to appoint a selected person. Exceptions may be considered if one of the following criteria is met:

1. The role can only be undertake by that person as they are the only person with the relevant knowledge, skills and experience, or
2. The project timeline means it is not possible to recruit and train a person in time to meet the imminent deadline, and
3. It is a short-term appointment. eClaims can only offer temporary payroll service of 12 weeks, unless utilising the SCP scheme, which has permission to use the payroll for up to 23 months.

If the HRBP grants you permission, you can liaise directly with e-claims@exeter.ac.uk (for temporary payroll) or humanresources@exeter.ac.uk for main payroll about setting up your new employee. You do not need to utilise the Internship scheme.

The Internship Induction Checklist is a tick list of some of the areas you may wish to cover with your intern during their induction period, including:

• Personnel documentation and information
• Health and Safety (includes COVID-19 issues)
• IT  
• Getting to know your organisation
• Getting to know who the intern will be working with
• Expectations of how the intern will work
• Support and Training

All interns should receive a comprehensive induction into the workplace. You can use the Internship Induction Checklist to guide you.

Interns are required to complete the university's online mandatory training as soon as possible once their employment has started. The mandatory training covers:

Requests for exemption from mandatory training

Requests for exemption from the essential training will be considered only in exceptional circumstances e.g. when the internship is for one week only.  To apply for an exemption you should follow these steps:

• Log into the SID Online system.
• Start a New Enquiry”, choosing "Mandatory Training Dispensation" (not the Mandatory Training General Enquiry) from the “Category” drop down list.
• Dispensations must be sought on behalf of a member of staff, associate or casual worker by the line manager or requester (or an individual must attach an email to the enquiry from their line manager explaining why dispensation is being requested).  Dispensation can be requested for individual courses or for multiple courses.
• For all other courses please refer to the Table of Mandatory training and contact the course sponsor / owner directly with your request.
• Please note, the People Development Team cannot authorise dispensations.

To check the mandatory training compliance status of everyone within your team, use the ‘Training’ tab of the My Team report. 

Students may have access to other staff training, subject to availability and the approval of the Learning and Development team. As your intern will not have a full Trent account, they can view the list of training at www.exeter.ac.uk/staff/development/courses/listing/.

To book training for your intern, contact the Internships Team at internships@exeter.ac.uk with the details and we will forward them to the Learning and Development team.

If training is essential to the role, we would expect you or your faculty to pay for the interns time. However, if the SCP wanted to undertake training and it was not essential to the role, but was viewed by you as developmental, they could choose to do this in their own time and unpaid. 

Monitoring performance

You should set clear objectives, and review and evaluate progress with your intern. You have the option to use the Internship Performance Development Review paperwork, or use your current internal performance indicators.

The Making the Most of Your Intern guide explains how you can manage and develop your intern. 

The intern can expect to have regular 1:1 sessions with their line manager. We recommend daily catch-ups during the induction period or if working remotely.

If in the workplace with other team members, 1:1 catch-ups with line mangers can reduce in frequency, depending on the intern’s need for direction, decision making and information. This can range between once a week to once every 4 weeks.

We will be in regular email communication to check the internships progressing well and offer support to you or your intern if needed. 

We are also able to offer advice regarding the disciplinary and grievance procedures: Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures for Student Campus Partnership.

Your feedback is really important to us and will help to shape our service.

As the internship comes to an end, the team will send you a survey to complete so you can tell us about the experience with your intern and the service you received.

What other recruiting managers say about the scheme

Take a look at our case studies here to learn about the success colleagues at the university have had using the Student Campus Partnership.

1. Can I appoint a student into an SCP role without advertising?

The University has a policy to advertise all employment opportunities in the interest of openness and fairness. Exceptions to this rule will only be considered if :

a) the role has a specific skillset and or knowledge that only a specific person can undertake; and/or

b) there is a time limitation that prevents you from going through the normal recruitment process e.g. the project is ending soon or funds need to be spent by the end of the financial year; and

c) these reasons have been approved by your HR Business Partner.

2. Can I conduct my own recruitment process and use the SCP Internship Agreement once appointed?

The SCP scheme offers academics a recruitment process, rather than just providing Internship Agreements (see Benefits section). If you have already conducted your own recruitment process we would recommend you liaise with you College HR Business Partner or Advisor to discuss your options.

 3. Do I need to pay my interns?

The University of Exeter has committed to paying the Living Wage to all our employees and workers. Employer Engagement and Student Employment has a policy of not advertising unpaid opportunities through our vacancy service. The Internship Team only advertise paid internships, through the SCP, SBP and GBP schemes.

4. Can I advertise for an intern with a protective characteristic?

• Protected characteristics. There are 8 protected characteristics: race, gender, religion, age, sexuality, disability, marriage/civil partnership status and pregnancy/maternity (Equality Act 2010).
• Positive Action is defined as measures employers can introduce take to address any imbalance of opportunity and or reduce disadvantage that those with a protected characteristic could face. In order to demonstrate the need for positive action the employer must have at least twelve months’ worth of data indicating that particular groups of people are under-represented in a particular area of work. Positive action can be used to encourage particular groups to apply, or to help people with particular protected characteristics to perform to the best of their ability e.g. positive action statements in recruitment adverts.
• Positive discrimination is illegal. Discrimination occurs when a candidate is given preferential treatment because of a protected characteristic, or is employed specifically because of a protected characteristic, rather than because they are the most qualified or equally qualified for a role.
• Occupational requirement. There are certain instances when an employer can specify particular characteristics for a role, if the role needs to be done by a person with that particular characteristic. For example, it would be legal and appropriate to specify that only women can apply for a role in a women’s refuge. This type of occupational requirement is permitted only if the employer can demonstrate:

1. Robust and demonstrable link between the requirement and the job
2. Good business case or aim for holding the specific requirement
3. Holding the requirement is proportionate (i.e. appropriate and necessary)

5. Can I accept an out of date passport as Right to Work evidence?

Yes, but only if it is a UK passport.

6. If my SCP's staff associate IT account has expired how can it be extended? 

If you set up the account you can extend it by logging into http://directory.exeter.ac.uk/#, click on the IT Access tab, then Check Existing Requests, then find your SCPs name and enter a new end date.

If you did not set up the account and the person who did is unable to do the extension you will need to log in to http://directory.exeter.ac.uk/#, click on the IT Access tab, then Request New IT access, then create a new IT account account (either Exeter or Cornwall Associate) for your SCP, but under Enter IT Account ID to keep an old account, insert the SCP's expired Exeter Staff Associate details. 

Amanda Searle | Student Employment Support Officer

Amanda has been at the university for 7 years and coordinates the advertising and account management for the Internships Team. Amanda is extremely knowledgeable about all the internship schemes which means she can provide a brilliant service to students, graduates, academics, and employers and is always happy to help with any queries.

Kitty Ashfield | Student Employment Administrator

Kitty joined the Internships Team in February 2023 and is working towards a Level 3 Business Administration apprenticeship at Exeter College.  Kitty supports the team with advertising, promotional activity, and communications. With a talent for design, Kitty creates engaging content for our social media channels to raise awareness of the employment opportunities available to Exeter's student community.

Olivia Osborne | Internships Assistant

The team wouldn't be complete without our very own intern!  Olivia is a second year Business Management & Marketing student at Exeter and a member of the Business & Finance Society (BFS).  Olivia helps us to provide ongoing support to students during their internships and manages student feedback.  She is also a keen networker in the local area - look out for Olivia's new vlog about the best networking events in Exeter. 'Olivia Recommends' is coming soon...

Andrea Hodges | Employment Schemes Manager

Andrea oversees student employment at the university including internships, graduate recruitment, funding schemes, and career mentoring. Andrea works with academics at the university and external employers to create more employment opportunities for all students and graduates, and is always looking at new initiatives that can support the development of employability skills.

Connect with Andrea on LinkedIn

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