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Advertise for Open Source Interns §

Pattern Summary §

Reach relevant student candidates for open source internships by advertising across a variety of platforms and networks.

Problem / Challenge §

  • Students on traditional computer science or engineering programs may have little awareness of open source internships or that an OSPO exists on their campus.

  • Relying on a single communications channel for promoting open source internships risks missing strong candidates who may not be aware of that platform.

  • Without active outreach through trusted networks such as faculty, department newsletters and student communities, programs struggle to build visibility among the students most likely to benefit.

Context §

  • A university with an established or emerging OSPO.

  • The OSPO is running or planning to run a structured open source internship or student worker program, either on a rolling semester basis or as a dedicated summer program.

  • Internships may be tied to academic credit; paid through grants or other funding sources; or a combination of both.

  • The program may involve matching students to existing faculty-led projects, internal OSPO projects, external open source organisations or industry partners.

Forces §

Students vary in how they find out about opportunities.

Solution §

Develop a structured advertising approach to reach students through the routes they actually use.

Make program and project information clear and accessible before advertising opens §

Ensure the OSPO website includes:

  • An overview of the program, its aims and what's involved in participation.

  • Provide individual project descriptions with enough detail for students to assess their fit including minimum requirements, the skills or background required and the expected time commitment.

  • Clear information on how to apply.

Options include:

  • The OSPO website, newsletter and mailing list.

  • The university student jobs portal or equivalent hiring platform (e.g. Handshake).

  • Targeted newsletters and email lists across relevant departments and institutes such as computer science, data science, statistics, AI and engineering.

  • Email outreach to faculty and staff who work with students in relevant areas, asking them to share the opportunity with students who they think would be a good fit.

  • Career fairs and other on-campus events, where contact details can be collected from interested students.

  • Student community groups such as coding clubs, hackathon groups and student societies.

Leverage ongoing relationships as a source of referrals §

Strategies include:

  • Keeping faculty and researchers who have previously engaged with the program informed when new positions open.

  • Building relationships with complementary programs such as undergraduate research schemes or data science institutes whose student networks overlap with the target audience.

  • Encouraging former interns to act as ambassadors for the program.

Hold information sessions §

Information sessions are a useful tool for building awareness and helping students understand what open source internship work involves before they apply. These can be held in person or online and may include short presentations from current or former interns, previous project mentors and/or participating organisations.

Hosting these sessions ahead of the application window gives students time to prepare a stronger application.

Resulting Context §

The program reaches a broader and more relevant pool of prospective applicants.

Students who apply have a clearer understanding of what the program involves and what's required of them.

The program develops a clearer picture of the advertising approaches that are most effective over time.

Additional Learning from The George Washington University Open Source Program Office §

We advertised internship and student worker opportunities through a combination of the university student jobs portal and targeted outreach via the OSPO newsletter. For an industry placement with Open Teams, newsletter advertising alone generated 70 applicants. (Five candidates were put forward to the partner organisation.)

We have also participated in the Code for GovTech program, which manages its own advertising and outreach and brings in a highly motivated international applicant pool.

Additional Learning from the Georgia Tech Open Source Program Office §

We used information sessions as an effective promotional tool for our Virtual Summer Internship Program (VSIP). The sessions included lightning talks from participating organisations to give prospective applicants a concrete sense of the projects and mentors involved.

We advertise on our dedicated website page, LinkedIn and via local mailing lists for undergrads and grad students.

We also send out an invite to our research computing list for PACE, which has several thousand students and faculty on it.

Additional Learning from Syracuse University Open Source Program Office §

We use Handshake and our mailing list as our primary advertising platforms.

Additional Learning from UW-Madison Open Source Program Office §

We advertise internship opportunities through multiple channels: our website; the university student jobs portal; the Data Science Institute newsletter; targeted outreach to other campus newsletters and networks; career fairs; and direct email to a contact list of interested students who attend our events.

Project mentors and Data Science Institute staff are also asked to share opportunities with students they think would be a good fit.

Known Instances §

References §

Contributors & Acknowledgement §

A note on AI use: In addition to working from Deep Dive transcripts, capturing learning from our community discussions and other patterns from our members, this pattern was drafted with the help of AI. As a small organization, tools like this help us turn rich conversations into written resources without losing the ideas along the way. As always, there were plenty of human eyes reviewing, editing and improving the content before this pattern made it to publication. Thanks go to our community for the insights. If you do spot any errors, please let us know so we can correct them!