Hiring talented interns that make an immediate impact on your company is a challenge when they lack experience, which is why these job boards are great resources for hiring top-quality students today.

It’s hard to argue against the economics of hiring interns. Employing free or very cheap labor is a low-risk solution for organizations that need workers, and internships offer recent grads or new professionals opportunities to gain valuable work experience.

Many companies historically hire interns on an unpaid basis in order to save costs on jobs that would otherwise go to entry-level employees, but unpaid internships have come under scrutiny as being ethically questionable. Few young professionals can afford to work for free, and arguments that unpaid internships exclude millions of low-income candidates from the workforce are gaining traction. With recent lawsuits escalating arguments on both sides of the issue, companies now shoulder the legal responsibility to know if and when an intern needs to be financially compensated according to the Federal Labor Standards Act (FSLA).

Tabling the legal and ethical debate of unpaid internships for the moment, hiring interns can have a positive impact on your organization, so you shouldn’t shy away from hiring young professionals who offer a fresh perspective, are eager to learn, and help cultivate mentorship and leadership skills among existing employees. To connect your company with fresh talent, check out these job boards and career resources for interns.

1. WayUp

The standout feature of WayUp is its appealing and user-friendly layout. Internship and entry-level job seekers can create personalized profiles that include their prior work experience and highlight extra criteria like volunteer experience, hobbies, and skills that demonstrate candidate value to employers.

With over 4.5 million candidates in their database from over 6500 different schools, there is no shortage of talent waiting to be discovered on WayUp. As an employer, you can create and post jobs via the company’s marketplace, and feel confident in WayUp’s representation of underserved minorities, who currently constitute over 35 percent of the total candidate database.

2. InternJobs.com

With its simple website design, InternJobs.com offers an affordable pricing plan that starts at $15 per posting for 30 days. What’s more, InternJobs.com has over two decades of experience connecting young professionals to employers. If you’re looking for a no-nonsense and regularly updated job board to post your open internships, then this is one resource you shouldn’t overlook.

3. Internships.com

Internships.com is the world’s largest student-focused internship marketplace, boasting its network size right on the site’s landing page: over 300k entry-level jobs and 5k internships from over 140k companies located in 10k cities across the US. The site offers free job posting for employers and a wide range of career resources for candidates, from how to write cover letters and resumes to interviewing advice.

Internships.com uses a powerful algorithm that allows students to search for opportunities based on major, industry, city, and company. The site even has an “Internship Predictor” that matches candidates with internships according to their personality and character references.

4. LinkedIn

You likely already use LinkedIn as a major sourcing tool for open positions at your organization, so why not leverage the world’s largest professional network for internships as well? Few other job boards can compete with the LinkedIn’s expansive network of members, companies, and educational institutions. With over 560 million active users on the platform, the likelihood of meeting a candidate through your existing network is high, making this a no-brainer for many companies.

5. Idealist

If your organization works in the non-profit sector, you may be in need of like-minded workers who share your passion for taking action and making an impact. With 1.4 million monthly visitors to the site’s English and Spanish sites, Idealist posts opportunities across the globe from nearly 130k organizations, and posting a new listing is as simple as logging in with a Facebook or Google account.

6. College Recruiter

College Recruiter was founded way back in 1991, and in over the last three decades it built a 7400-strong network of one-, two-, and four-year colleges across the country. Posting an open internship on the site starts at $75 per listing but can be tailored to target specific schools, majors, graduation years, GPAs, languages, or diversity requirements. College Recruiter also offers custom advertising solutions at various price points and hosts regular College Recruiting Bootcamps where HR professionals, hiring managers, and college relations professionals gather to network, brainstorm, and share ideas about how to attract the next generation of talent to your organization.

Recruiting’s digital revolution has been a boon for job seekers around the world, and now students and recent graduates have a tool designed to connect them with the best employers possible.

Your first job out of college probably felt like the most important event of your life, and for many, looking back, it was as pivotal as if felt back them. Imagine there’d been tech to tailor-match your skills to prospective employers looking for students and recent grads just like you? Well, let Melissa Weir, Head of B2B Marketing at WayUp tell you a few things about what WayUp can do to help you with that.

Check out WayUp and others on the SmartRecruiters marketplace!

What was the inspiration behind WayUp?

When Liz Wessel, co-founder and CEO of WayUp, was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, she was a campus ambassador for Anheuser-Busch, where the company asked if she could help recruit mechanical engineering candidates. Liz was floored that such a big company would reach out to a sophomore, and she realized there was a huge opportunity to help companies recruit straight from college campuses.

What were some issues in the hiring process you thought needed changing?

The college campus recruiting model wasn’t efficient. There were only a handful of people in career services, tasked with supporting thousands of students ready to find an internship, or their first job after graduation. This unbalanced system doesn’t provide students with resources to find jobs suited to their interests, or to discover new opportunities.

Companies can’t visit every college every year, and when they get the chance, it’s usually for career fairs attended by a small portion of the student population, which makes it difficult to target and source for specific roles, especially in STEM and Finance. There had to be a better way to reach, recruit, engage and hire quality early-career candidates.

Why is WayUp a necessary tool for SmartRecruiters customers?

For over 5 million early-career professionals, WayUp is the go-to platform to explore job and internship opportunities, receive advice, and be discovered by employers. Top companies from startups to Fortune 500s use WayUp’s platform to reach, recruit, and engage early-career talent. WayUp students and recent graduates represent over 6,600 campuses in the US, and WayUp’s candidates are currently growing at 35,000 new students and recent graduates per week.

So how does it actually work?

Employers post targeted job listings, invite candidates to apply, and directly message them, all on one platform. We also offer industry-leading employment branding, to help employers build awareness among Gen Z and Millennials.

What does WayUp do that can’t be done through normal job boards?

Where traditional recruiting platforms may focus on years of experience, certifications, and professional networks, WayUp allows students to showcase their personal and professional experience, interests, and areas of study.

For employers, traditional job boards and recruiting marketplaces lead with quantity over quality. They simply don’t satisfy the recruiting funnel for students and recent graduates. WayUp bridges that gap, leading to the highest hiring rate among all early-career recruiting platforms.

How does WayUp make the hiring process as easy as possible?

For every job you post on WayUp, you can apply filters to guarantee only the most appropriate candidates can see the job and apply for it. Employers can directly message and invite individuals to apply.

What do you see as the future of Talent Acquisition?

We feel strongly that opportunity belongs to all. People should never be limited by their economic status, race, sexual orientation, gender, who they know, where they went to school, or where they’re from.

Did you know if a student accepts a full-time offer at Boeing after their summer internship the company will pay for next year’s tuition? Or that if NetApp hires a student after their summer internship they will send them monthly care packages throughout their senior year? The hiring market is competitive and employers are willing to go to great lengths to hire and retain top-notch talent.

The highly competitive atmosphere of today’s hiring pool is essentially a war for talent. Companies have to hire early and fast to get the 32.6% of students that start looking for work over three months before graduation.  Already 37.7% of large companies start recruiting interns over a year in advance. Talented interns (especially engineers) are in high demand. Every company needs bright, hardworking employees to help execute their business goals, and hiring recent grads early on is a critical part of building a pipeline of top talent.

Additionally in 2012, 69% of interns at companies with 100+ employees were offered full-time jobs.

Hiring interns as full-time employees isn’t just a great recruiting hack, it also impacts your company’s bottom line. According to College Mogul employers stand to save between $10,000 and $50,000 in tangible and intangible costs by hiring an intern as a full-time employee. And, one of the biggest cost-savers of converting interns in to full-time hires is the all-important stat of retention rate. Retention rates for interns-turned-full-time-employees are high—62.4% after five years compared to 48.1% for hires that came with no internship experience whatsoever.

So what’s the TL:DR version?

1. Hire smarter. If you have a talented intern in your company and a full-time role available, don’t wait until the summer ends to make them a formal offer.
2. Sweeten the deal. Offer students a signing bonus in exchange for an early commitment to your company. If you can’t compete with the compensation packages offered by large companies, offer other benefits like stock options and equity, access to your network and introductions to mentors or other industry professionals.
3. Don’t get discouraged. Awesome interns know other awesome interns. If your intern isn’t ready to commit or accepts an offer somewhere else, offer them a bonus for a peer-to-peer referral.

Whether you plan to woo potential full-time hires with schwag, fancy dinners or a simple call from your CEO, the time to begin hiring is now.

Ashley Mosley is the Community Engagement Manager at InternMatch, an online platform connecting the best intern candidates and employers. Connect with Ashley and InternMatch on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates, and make the right hires.

With numbers like 60% of paid internships converting into full-time offers, students facing a bleak economic landscape know that internships are their fast pass to a career in their chosen field. And as recruiters know, interns from top universities are often the best candidates for full-time positions—creating a solid internship program, then, saves considerable energy and resources when hiring for fulltime positions.

What kind of work are interns looking for? In the recruiting shuffle, it’s easy to lose sight of what the big picture is, which is why InternMatch keeps track of top internship searches within their website. Having kept a finger on the pulse of search queries from students in the past year, we’re sharing the most sought after positions of 2012—and some of them may surprise you:

9. Art

Art production and gallery interns support the vital operations of creative venues, finding mentorships and sometimes brushing shoulders with icons from the art world. These benefits encourage students to apply for internships in hubs like New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.—three cities with traditions in art as well as a thriving contemporary scene. Employers should take advantage of this traffic as well as connect with students who may be in town on fellowships or residencies.

8. Journalism

With journalism moving increasingly away from print venues towards online platforms, and even social media, internships in the field are great barometers for students to gauge their aptitude for the job. Companies seeking researchers, content writers, and editors would do well to bring on journalism students who have a strong background in all three tasks.

7. Event Planning

It’s one thing to know how to throw a great party—it’s quite another to know how to plan a fundraising dinner for thousands of people. Event planning interns have the tri-fold talent of researching venues, coordinating logistics, and assembling press kits. Experience is also the best teacher in this field, so students are vigilant about finding opportunities to support an organization’s operations.

6. Engineering/Computer Science

Qualified computer science and engineering students are hot commodities in today’s hiring world, and they know it. What’s instructive here is the realization that tech hopefuls aren’t defaulting to searches of Google or Facebook internships, but potential engineering interns are taking the time to find the best cultural fit. As candidates scramble for high-paying jobs in innovative companies, employers are putting on a recruiting hustle to match.

5. Design

Design students have talent, will travel. With building a professional portfolio at the top of their priorities list, designers seek opportunities all throughout college. Employers hoping to attract high-octane design interns should consider hosting design contests or asking candidates to replace the cover letter with an artistic campaign.

4. Public Relations

Pulling together media lists, writing press releases, and responding to press all fall under the jurisdiction of a public relations intern. PR students are passionate about branding and brand awareness, making them crucial additions to the team. Eager to jump into hands-on projects, their work can help ensure your company’s or clients’ success.

3. Accounting/Finance

Accounting internships are usually funnels for entry-level positions later on, especially at giant firms like Ernst & Young and Deloitte, who start their recruiting efforts early. The intense interview processes ensure that the selected candidates are talented, hardworking, and likely additions to the team. Accounting internships pay well and are stable, giving us insights into what students are looking for in a job opportunity.

2. Business

Known for their professional savvy and ambition, business students hunt for internships to start the climb up the management ladder early. Internships in business development and management are highly sought after for graduate students as well; to attract a candidate from Harvard or Columbia, consider taking a guest speaker position or sponsoring a business plan competition on campus.

1. Marketing

Marketing tops this list by a wide margin, getting 30% more hits than the last industry. The attraction of marketing is its versatility and blend between creativity and analytics. Marketing strategists seek positions that allow room for interns to brainstorm and execute campaigns, be it traditional or new media. An emerging subfield is social media, with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest becoming bigger players in converting users.

There you have it–the 9 most sought after fields that most entice top students who hope to transition smoothly from university to career. Take advantage of their internship search by reaching out through university departments, posting on internship job sites and sponsoring events in a local academic community. With the right allotment of resources, you’ll build a student funnel that speeds and smooths the hiring process.

Jenny Xie is a content marketing intern at InternMatch.

Post internship positions to InternMatch through SmartRecruiters‘ recruiting software to manage candidates from all sources.