A LEADING subsea company has seen for itself the benefits of taking on interns.

Last summer, Darlingtonbased CTC Marine Projects, which specialises in laying seabed cable and marine trenching, took on Fraser Edwards, who has just finished his first year of study at Imperial College, London, for an eight-week period.

It formed part of a partnership with Darlington Borough Council, which had enlisted firms in the town in its Encouraging Engineering project.

Anne Yare, human resources director at the Coniscliffe Road firm, said: “We had excellent candidates applying. He was a first-class student but came to us with no experience of our industry and got to work on some really interesting projects with our engineering and design teams.”

Ms Yare said both he and the firm had benefited from the experience.

“It serves two purposes. It gives the employer the opportunity to look at individuals and, for the intern, it gives them the opportunity to look at the realities of working in our business,” she said.

“A week or two work experience is sometimes too short.

“We do work experience with local schools but that serves a different purpose.

This is about people who are making some key decisions about their future careers.

“We wanted to make the time really worthwhile for both parties as we invest a lot of time in those eight weeks.”

Ms Yare said it also gave candidates an opportunity to see the diversity of work the firm did.