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A company posted a requirement for an internship position for 3 months. They got an application for the same but during the interview it was found that the applicant already is well versed with the roles and responsibilities of that position.

Now he is negotiating that he should be compensated a higher salary since he is not getting to learn anything new but he is going to do the same job he has done before at a different firm. Is this behavior professional and should HR offer a higher salary to the candidate?

When asked why did he apply for intern position he said because it's required by the institute where he has enrolled for post graduate program to complete 3 months internship.

Short Answer: If you have budget and requirement for an internship, then that is on offer. This person can choose to take that or not.

If the role you have available is for an intern, then that is what you are offering. The person is applying for an internship as this is a requirement for their course.

In the end, you have a role you are offering, and they have an expectation of what they would like to be paid for. The fact is that they are still an intern, so they have to decide if they are going to accept an offer at that level.

It really is up to you if you wish to pay them more for their internship, but I would make it clear that the role on offer is an internship (which they need to complete requirements for their studies) and there is a rate for that role.

It's really impossible to answer your question without more details.

The pay you can offer them should reflect:

• how much he is worth to you. Is he worth to you more than "normal" interns are? Would you be able to make use of his more developed skills?


• your budgetary constraints. Can you afford to have a new employee?

An internship is not the same as a full-time position with less pay.

An intern:
- little to no responsibility beyond doing the tasks given to them
- learns on the job
- is limited form a few month to a year

A full-term:
- takes ownership of their work from beginning to end
- after on-boarding is done doesn't need to relearn their core function
- stays with the company often for more than a year

A intern should be able to expect some hand holding and ideally to see new aspects of the job he or she is growing into.
An intern position (if done right) takes away time from a more senior employee to onboard and all that specific knowledge leaves the company after 3 months.

For a certain projects interns are a really good fit: e.g. write some stand alone piece of code that is used only for short period of time
Such projects often only get funded, because they can be done by an intern.

Paying an intern a full-time salary makes your "intern projects" more expensive.

So in the end it is not just about the skill set of the candidate it is about what is adequate for the role. There might be a little bit of wiggle room, but if you are looking for an intern for an intern project you really shouldn't pay a full time salary for no reason.

You should really evaluate what the company needs and what he can offer.

Internships are usually already an investment which cost the company more than they bring initially. You have a lot of time invested in onboarding, mentoring, HR, hardware/software, tax-forms and so on. Compared to the amount of work the intern does this hardly balances out. The prospect of the intern becoming a fulltime employee after the internship (and maybe good PR) is usually what justifies the investment.

According to your comment the post-grad student has no inention of bein employed at your company after the 3 month internship. And he wants to be payed a lot more. Companies usually don't hire full time employees for a period as short as 3 months, because the expenditure for a new employee are not amortized after such a short period.

This all would likely lead to the conclusion of not hiring him for more than the usual internship salary, if even hiring him at all for an internship.

An intern who you know will only be there for 3 months is not worth as much as a full-time employee.

The value of an employee isn't just the work that they complete in a particular time period. It's also the anticipation that they will continue to learn and grow and add more value to the company over time. Personally, my second 3 months with the company produced a ton more value than my first 3 months, and my most recent 3 months was a lot more valuable than either of them. That's because I've learned a ton about the job since I started, and because I've also learned a lot about the company and how to work here.

Even if an intern produced the same amount of work in 3 months as a full time employee would have, they still aren't as valuable to the company as a full-time employee who will continue to learn and grow from there.