InternMatch launches community pages to help companies compete for interns

Intern job board InternMatch announced a $500,000 second round of funding and opened its community pages today, allowing companies to show off their culture as well as their internship openings.

InternMatch at its core is a job board where employers can post positions and students can search by interest and location. Simple enough. The new community pages feature, however, acts similarly to a Facebook fan page. A potential employer can tout swanky office digs, interact on a Q&A section for internship seekers, show off a blog or social network feed and overall put out a competitive message: We are great; come work for us.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":328094,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"entrepreneur,","session":"D"}']

As baby boomers’ children grow up and college applications swell each year, the competition pool for internships is also heating up. The days when interns were office coffee runners and dry cleaning fetchers are over. Now companies need to compete for potential intern affection and can use the community pages to their advantage.

“Corporate sites are static,” explained chief executive Andrew Maguire in an interview with VentureBeat. “We’re helping companies to understand the value of promoting their employment brand to college students year round. It’s not just ‘we need an intern, let’s post a listing’ anymore.”

The 24 year old Maguire understands the intern perspective personally, as his last internship was in his sophomore year of college, before starting InternMatch in his junior year at Columbia University in New York.

InternMatch has roughly 30 companies lined up to use the community pages, including non-profit darlings Kiva and DonorsChoose, along with DoSomething, Ashoka, Sequoia Capital, Pixar, AOL, Wikimedia Foundation, Yelp and others.

“We very specially reached out and targeted the companies we have because we believe the work they are doing is important,” said Maguire.

In terms of InternMatch’s $500,000 capital injection, Maguire is excited about propelling the product with his investors’ help. Netflix founder Marc Randolph and Roger Dickey, creator of Facebook game Mafia Wars will prove especially valuable, said Maguire.

“When we think about who we want on board, we say, ‘Look where our big knowledge gaps are,'” he explained.

Randolph will help InternMatch with the problem of discovering new internships. Discovery has been a main issue for many companies, and for Maguire, Netflix has a suitable answer to pushing the right content toward the right faces.

[aditude-amp id="medium1" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":328094,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"entrepreneur,","session":"D"}']

Maguire hopes Dickey will help InternMatch take advantage of Facebook, although he is cautious of the social network.

“We need to be very careful with Facbeook. Students are uncomfortable combining Facebook with their career search. We need to make sure that we’re not putting students in a position where they feel uncomfortable,” he said.

InternMatch has stiff competition against companies like job board giant Monster, and Internships.com, which gained media attention in March when Charlie Sheen posted a social media internship during his Twitter heyday.

InternMatch was founded in 2009 and has three employees. The company is located in San Francisco and has raised capital just shy of $1 million. Other investors include 500 Startups, Angel Fund Social Leverage, and a number of angel investors.

[aditude-amp id="medium2" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":328094,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"entrepreneur,","session":"D"}']

[First image via granata68/Shutterstock]