Rakesh Nadig was still working on his master’s degree in electronics and computer engineering at the University of California, Irvine, when he started an internship at QLogic Corp. in June 2011.
The Aliso Viejo-based networking equipment maker did more than provide him a chance to get a foot in the door and catch the boss’ eye. It paid him $20 an hour—the equivalent of about $40,000 a year for a full-timer.
That sort of outlay has become typical in the technology sector, where companies increasingly rely on internships as ways to identify young talent and lay the groundwork for retaining the best prospects.
QLogic got its return when Nadig signed on as a full-time engineer with a starting salary of at least $60,000 a year.
The company has 500 workers in Orange County and some 1,200 companywide. For years it added to its base of senior and junior engineers by moving a few fresh graduates up from internships to staff positions.
The pace has quickened lately—at QLogic and other technology companies that are hiking pay for interns and hiring more in a race for talent.
“Now it’s a necessity,” said Phil Felando, QLogic’s vice president of human resources. “As soon as they finish their degree we convert them to full-time regulars.”
The company has already converted 17 interns to full-time jobs this year, the most in its 18-year history. A fifth of new hires in the next 12 months will be fresh out of school.
They won’t all come easy.
Competitors
Competition to land and retain interns is stiff for Orange County companies, which compete against Silicon Valley firms, among others, to attract top talent.
QLogic makes electronics such as switches and adapter cards that speed up the flow of data on corporate storage networks. Its sector is relatively small in Southern California, and it needs to pay interns top wages to compete.
Here that means $20 to $25 an hour, about on par with Northern California competitors.
“We have to regularly look at specific salary surveys on interns and new grads in order to make sure we’re competitive against what other tech companies are offering,” said Tracy Perlongo, QLogic’s senior employment specialist.
Costa Mesa-based rival Emulex Corp. pays its interns about $22 hour on average.
The company counts on ties to regional colleges and universities to get an early lead on potential candidates.
Emulex Chief Executive Jim McCluney is on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of California, Irvine’s School of Engineering, and is heavily involved with Project Tomorrow.
Jeff Benck, Emulex president and chief operating officer, is on the board of the UC Irvine’s CEO Roundtable and the UCI Paul Merage School of Business Dean’s Advisory Board.
About half of last year’s group of 60 summer interns were hired as full-time employees, with starting salaries ranging between $68,000 and $74,000.
“Our goal is always to have repeat customers,” said Melissa Moore, senior director of employee relations and development at Emulex. “We really like to be able to cultivate them over time. That helps our overall program.”
Ambassadors
Another goal of the program: to send interns back to school and act as ambassadors for the company, with the hopes of attracting more enthusiastic interns in the future.
Ingram Micro Inc. is crafting a new intern strategy aimed at building awareness through the college and university ranks.
“We’re not a household name—people don’t use us on a daily basis,” said Greg Hauser, Ingram’s senior manager of talent acquisition. “The challenge for us is showing who we are.”
Ingram’s name doesn’t carry the same cache of Apple or Facebook on college campuses, but odds are its services have moved the electronics that students can’t live without.
The Santa Ana-based company is the biggest distributor of computers, software, and other technology products in the world, with revenue topping $37.8 billion in 2012.
Ingram goes up against the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Google for software developers. It also faces off with companies in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere for business developers, sales and marketing staffers, and e-commerce personnel.
“We compete in every single one of these markets for the best and brightest talent,” Hauser said.
Ingram Micro had 14 interns in 2012 at its headquarters and took on another seven with its $840 million buy of Indianapolis-based wholesale distributor BrightPoint Inc. last year.
The company used to rely on its various business groups to highlight a need and then designate a specific project for an intern to handle. The student would end the internship once the project was done, and in most cases, ties to the company.
“We want to expose more things to them at Ingram Micro than we have in the past,” Hauser said. “The goal is purely to build solid performers or future talent for this organization.”
Smith Micro
Aliso Viejo-based Smith Micro Software Inc. draws intern talent from schools throughout Southern California, including UCI, the University of Southern California and California State University, Long Beach. It takes a similar approach with schools near its operations in Pittsburgh and Belgrade, Serbia.
The company, which makes software for cell phones and connecting mobile devices to wireless networks, targets tech enthusiasts who speak the language.
“They bring in fresh new ideas,” said human resource manager Tran Lam.
Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. has some 600 interns scattered around the globe, with a majority concentrated at its hubs in Orange County, Silicon Valley, Israel, China and Singapore.
About 360 are in the U.S.
Interns typically work one or two semesters, and it’s not uncommon for them to do more than one stint.
“They get to know the company and get to know our technology and products,” said Terri Timberman Broadcom’s head of human resources.
Broadcom interns make about $28 an hour on average, according to Glassdoor, a Sausalito company that surveys interns and other employees to track salaries and job openings.
About a quarter to a third of Broadcom interns become full-time employees, according to Timberman.
“It’s really part of a long-term strategy finding the best technology talent around the world,” Timberman said.
Pune
That search took QLogic to Pune, India, about 520 miles northwest of Nadig’s hometown of Bangalore.
A design center the company established there in late 2007 to complement an office in Bangalore has grown to employ some 250 people today. The city of 5 million is still developing its tech industry, and isn’t nearly as far along as Bangalore and Hyderabad, another tech center where rival Emulex has operations.
QLogic has nonetheless managed to draw a steady stream of interns for its operations in Pune.
It helps that universities in India vet and grade companies before they can recruit interns, who are almost certain to take a position with an employer that’s been approved by school officials.
India’s rising status in the tech world wasn’t enough to retain Nadig, who left Bangalore for UCI in 2010.
“India is a new place where companies are trying to experiment with the talent,” he said. “The U.S. is the place where most of the research and development happens.”
