Like anything in life the ability to anticipate future needs and forecast appropriate decisions ahead time can be the deciding point in making or breaking the success of an individual or organisation. The ability to anticipate not only the needs and desires that effect a companies decisions but also the ability to analyse and predict emerging trends ahead of time can lead to a significant competitive advantage.

As the current labour pool of students and graduates increases by the day, there is an ever growing supply of people seeking gainful employment to establish themselves in a professional capacity. However, the availability of credited beneficial internship placements can be seen as quite difficult to come by. From a students perspective many have felt caught up in the age old catch-22 situation of over educated, yet under experienced.

To some people, internships are perceived as little more than a mere exercise to boast employment numbers or act as a cheap source of labour. From a companies perspective interns act not only as an alternative form of recruitment and source of goodwill but allow a company to explore alternative management styles and functionalities.

However, in order to fully appreciate and anticipate the prospective benefits associated with recent labour circumstances and the growing demand for internships there needs to be a strong level of forethought and advanced planning.

Top tips of how to analyse and anticipate future internship opportunities and prospects.

1. Advanced planning: Create vacancies and posting of placements for upcoming years ahead of the actual proposed start date of the internship to assess general interest in placements.

2. By carefully anticipating future company human resource planning one can utilise internship placements as alternative forms of conventional recruitment.

3. Research and forecast the market trends, needs and demographics of available labour.

4. Research related industries to try to find a cross over of skills and variances.

5. Benchmark the competition and the industry: Always an important element in assessing ones position in the market in relation to other companies.

6. New Market opportunities: with the increasing development of Web 2.0 application, new business, employment and market opportunities are emerging each day.

7. Seasonal factors and forecasts. A careful analysis of seasonal changes is an important aspects of human resource planning as many interns will predominantly come from universities or similar institutions and therefore will seek to carry out their internship in accordance to their breaks from education.

8. Conduct an internal analysis of the company. Analyse and measure what potential areas are in need of change and develop programs accordingly.

9. Turn weaknesses into strengths. Analyse what are the current labour problems and create future vacancies that will cover those areas of weakness.

10. Finally the act of anticipating future prospects allows companies to re-think and re-design their company structure to meet future employment needs.

In summary, anticipating and forecasting future employee and internship requirements can be viewed as an essential method of forward planning and strategy. To gain one step ahead of the current competition and predict the future market and employment changes.