Holiday Survey

Q: We are setting our holidays for 2011 and I wondered how many holidays your company provides each year.

We provide 13-14/year including a shutdown between Christmas and New Years Day. Depending on the year's calendar, we provide a total of 13-14 holidays per year. We have no floating holidays.

How many DESIGNATED holidays do you provide your employees? How many FLOATING holidays (or personal days to be taken whenever the employee wishes to take them). This does not include vacation/sick/PTO.

A: Download the results (.xls).

Internships

Prometheus is in the process of developing a paid internship program. For those of you who currently have a formalized program in place, if you could provide answers to the following questions, it would be greatly appreciated:

1. What is the pay structure? (i.e, is there one set amount for those in an undergraduate program and one set for students in a Graduate program and what are those amounts?)

• Our thought on an undergrad intern is $12/hr. We have not set a range for graduate students.

• The majority of our interns have been undergraduate students and we pay hourly, $10 to $14. Usually students w/ one year of college are paid towards the $10 range and the rate increases for every year of college.

• Our intern program is not open to graduate students. Our pay structure is as follows:

Year in School in Fall Hourly Pay:
College Freshman $11
College Sophmore $12
College Junior $13
College Senior $14

Please note we payroll our interns through a payrolling company - they are not actual employees

• Pay depends on the level (grad or undergrad) and the specific department budget but we normally pay $12-$16. We could go higher for experienced grad students and we have gone lower for non-technical positions such as sales training.

• We haven’t had interns in two years, but we paid $10/11 for first year and $11/12 per hour for second year with the company.

• Undergrads get $12/hour, across all departments. Graduates are at $14. You'll probably find that low compared to other companies, but we've never had a problem attracting interns, and they stay with us for 2+ years many times.

2. How are internships approved; what is the formal approval process consist of?

• Directors put in a request for an intern, HR summarizes the requests and submits one request to hire for CEO approval for the total #'s of interns.

• The budget for the following year's program is determined in the fall, during our budget process. Based on the $ amount approved, the Sr VP Research works with HR to determine the # of interns the budget can support (based on prior years exp). Our program is open to science related internships only. Our 2010 program has 8 interns.

• As long as the department has the budget for it there is no formal requisition for the intern but we do get the standard approvals before an offer is made. This is the 3rd year we are hosting a summer internship program. In early Spring I ask department heads who is interested in hosting a paid intern for the summer. I remind them that the work should be meaningful and they should be assigned a mentor to supervise their work. Note: this is also a great development opportunity for some employees interested in management to supervise and intern.

• Needs to be in budget or $$$ available in budget; then only VP and HR have to approve.

• The lab assistant intern positions are linked to pharmaceutical chemist positions, meaning Chemist II's have automatic approval to hire an intern(s) to support them. Other departments hire interns with Sr. Manager request and Pres or CEO approval.

3. Who sources and selects the Interns; the supervisor, a committee or HR?

• Last summer we had 4 interns and this summer we will have 3 to 5 interns. HR does most of the screening and placements.

• Interested students complete an application on-line and include a cover letter and resume. All the applications go to the Sr. VP Research for an initial review. He reviews and may screen out a few, such as those students not seeking a degree in a science related field, students not in the U.S., etc. HR sorts the applications by degree major and then each mentor receives all the applications to review. Each mentor provides HR with their top 3 choices. HR ensures no overlaps and if there are, determines which mentor will initially screen the student. Mentors then conduct telephone interviews with their top 3 students and then advise HR on which student they have selected. HR then contacts the student and extends the offer to join the program. At that time, HR also reviews the program requirements, pay rate, etc.

• As with our regular interview process we hold individual interviews with a few people that the intern may work with (this is usually a much smaller team than a regular hire but they meet with about 3-4 people). I meet with the candidates at the beginning of the interview to explain more about the company and the internship program. Usually they are very nervous so I try to set them at ease about the process. We have also had success by adding programs during the summer to give them more expose to other area of the company. We do a breakfast with the CEO and the executive team where each functional VP describes their area of responsibility and they offer career advice. The students love it and so does the exec team! Last year I also had them each do a presentation at the end of the summer on the project(s) they worked on and we had a lunch and learn and bought pizza and salad and opened it to all employees to attend. They all did a great job and the employees got visibility into other areas of the company.

• In past, recruiter and hiring supervisor interviewed and hired; Department VP and Head of HR approve final candidate.

• HR sources, supervisor selects.

4. What schools do you have a partnership with to advertise your internships?

• None.

• Most of our interns have been referred to the company from employees.

• We primarily recruited UCSD students at the Spring job fair; during busier years we attend SDSUs. Generally, we didn’t need to pay for advertising.

• We partner with UCSD and USD (where we have strong relationships with the Chemistry department and its professors) for science positions, and utilize SDSU (alone with the other 2) for non-science related internships. We're very active in the student societies on campus (ACS, Pre-Pharmacy, Engineering) and are referred interns that way also.

• For this year's program, we posted the opportunity on our website as well as the following locations:

A.T. Still University of Health Sciences Mesa AZ
Azusa Pacific University Azusa CA
Biola University La Mirada CA
California State University, San Marcos San Marcos CA
Cerro Coso College Ridgecrest CA
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science Los Angeles CA
College of Santa Fe Santa Fe NM
Colorado State University Fort Collins CO
Dominican University San Rafael CA
Eastern New Mexico University Portales NM
Fort Lewis College Durango CO
Keystone Symposia
La Sierra University Riverside CA
Metropolitan State College of Denver Denver CO
MiraCosta College Oceanside, CA
Monster.com
Naropa University Boulder CO
National Hispanic University San Jose CA
New Mexico Highlands University Las Vegas NM
New Mexico State University Las Cruces NM
Northern Arizona University Flagstaff AZ
Palo Verde College Blyte CA
Palomar College San Marcos CA
Prescott College Prescott AZ
San Diego Community College District Job Board
San Diego State University San Diego CA
Santiago Canyon College Orange CA
University of Arizona Tucson AZ
University of California, Irvine Irvine CA
University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles CA
University of California, Merced Merced CA
University of California, Riverside Riverside CA
University of California, San Diego San Diego CA
University of California, San Francisco San Francisco CA
University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara CA
University of California, Santa Cruz Santa Cruz CA
University of Colorado Boulder CO
University of New Mexico Albuquerque NM
University of San Diego San Diego CA
University of Southern California Los Angeles CA
University of the Southwest Hobbs NM
Yuba College Marysville CA

On-Site Security

Q: We are taking a quick look at security practices and would appreciate your response.

1. Does your organization have on-site security services/personnel?
2. If yes, is the security personnel an employee of your organization or contracted staff through a third party?
3. If yes, please provide the number of San Diego based employees at your location.

Download the survey results.

Security Badges

Q: Some security questions:
1. How many employees you employ?
2. Do you have security/building badges with pictures?
3. If so, do you require your employees to wear their badges at all times?

We have badges with pictures, but currently do not require our 60 employees to wear them at all times. We feel it's time to change this policy due to more non-employees on site.

A. Please see our Survey Results Spreadsheet and note that:

• Many companies require temps and visitors to wear badges (no pictures for visitors) as well as sign in.
• One company prints picture on both sides of badge so employees can't hide the picture.
• One company charges $5.00 if a badge has to be replaced.
• Two companies had no identifying information on badge (just picture) so if the badge is lost, the finder doesn't know which company it belongs to.