蘑菇传媒

The University鈥檚 successful on-campus internship scheme, 蘑菇传媒 Insights, is returning in 2026-27.

How the programme works

蘑菇传媒 Insights is a programme designed for first year undergraduate students, to help them gain professional skills and work experience in a safe, supportive environment.

Offering meaningful internships with professional services departments / teams builds confidence and career awareness and enables students to compete successfully for high-quality work experience opportunities in subsequent years.

Finding work experience can be a real challenge for first year students as organisations often ask for evidence of prior experience and skills they have yet to acquire. 蘑菇传媒 Insights bridges this gap by offering students the opportunity to work on a real project, developing a range of sought-after skills and competencies, whilst being supported by their host department as well as colleagues from Employability and Student Success.

蘑菇传媒 Insights is open to most first year undergraduate students. (Students who are studying a distance learning course or visiting the University on an exchange are not eligible to apply.)

All interns are paid the Real Living Wage (equivalent to a grade 2) and receive free on-campus accommodation. The host department funds the internship from their budget.

Internships are full-time (a 36.5-hour week) on campus and last 8 weeks, through June and July 2027.

Hosting an intern

The process of hosting a 蘑菇传媒 Insights intern is:

1. You submit your by 2 November 2026
2. The Internships Team will meet and review projects. Any edits will be discussed with you.
3. You submit an SRF for your internship opportunity in Stonefish (we will provide guidance on how to do this)
4. We write a job advert, and applications open to students on 4 January 2027
5. We shortlist applications using a consistent set of criteria, and let all applicants know if they have been successful or not
6. We organise and host a number of assessment centres (usually four) in week commencing 8 March 2027. If you would like to, you can join us at one or more assessment centres, but there is no requirement that you do
7. We appoint successful candidates to the most appropriate internship, taking into account any stated preferences of both the candidate and the host manager
8. We organise the intern's appointment as a member of staff, and you organise any equipment, work space, etc
9. The intern works with your team as an intern from 7 June - 30 July 2027

Planning your internship

You will need to define the project parameters and have a clear goal for your intern(s) to work towards. There are a number of project themes to help categorise and align internship opportunities; you will need to select one for each of your projects:

• data
• operations
• sustainability
• student support
• education and policy
• marketing communications
• other (for projects that don鈥檛 fit neatly into the above categories)

As the internships are relatively short (8 weeks), we recommend offering one project rather than spreading your intern's focus across different areas or functions.

If you have sufficient budget, it works well to offer two internships as this provides peer support for the interns and you get the benefit of different perspectives and insights.

Browse the internship opportunities offered in 2026.

Key considerations

Remember 蘑菇传媒 Insights internships are intended for students with minimal or no prior work experience, and role requirements are therefore inclusive.

The programme is not intended to absorb existing ad hoc and temporary employment opportunities, and instead is designed to bring valuable student insight to meaningful projects.

You should think carefully about what additional skills it might be useful (but not essential) for the intern to have and what skills you can help your intern(s) develop throughout the project.

We cannot offer remote-only internships, as part of the purpose is to help students build confidence, develop their interpersonal communication skills, and work with colleagues in a professional environment. You must commit to providing a desk on campus with supervision every Monday - Thursday for the full duration of the internship. This ensures interns are embedded in the team and can benefit from consistent in-person support and development. You will need to think about points of contact and support across the department, and how much time you will need to invest in supporting your intern(s). We expect managers to provide a minimum of a daily check-in via Teams if you鈥檙e not in the office together, and a 1:1 once a week.

You will need to think about any training and resource requirements, and put together a timeline for the internship, to give your intern(s) some structure.

Some important questions to consider are:

• how will this project align with department and/or university objectives?
  
• what do you want the intern to achieve?
  
• are your goals realistic given the intern鈥檚 experience and timeframe?
  
• how will you measure success?

This guidance will help your 蘑菇传媒 Insights intern be as successful as possible.

Timeline

More information and further reading

If you're not sure whether hosting an intern is right for you, or what difference an intern could make to your department, we strongly recommend reading our . This collection of case studies and reflections from previous host managers gives an insight into the kinds of projects interns have worked on, how managers really got the best out of their interns, and the lasting legacy of the work the interns have delivered.

You might also be interested in:

• Supporting documents for the internship programme, including the job description for all 蘑菇传媒 Insights internships and the project brief template
• Manager guidance on how to plan a 蘑菇传媒 Insights internship