Heh. I've worked on staff at IBM Extreme Blue for four years, and actually, our conversion rate is well above atrocious. (I'm guessing your undergrad years were

Heh. I've worked on staff at IBM Extreme Blue for four years, and actually, our conversion rate is well above atrocious. (I'm guessing your undergrad years were a few years back, though, since you mention us & Microsoft but not our biggest rival for talent, Google). In any case, though, you're right on the money in the bulk of what you're saying. Top-quality interns are highly aware of what they're doing, and what their goals are for a given internship. A prestigious internship should deliver on all of the following: exciting challenges, a high level of autonomy/entrepreneurship, a decent salary, and an impressive top line in the "experience" section of your resume. From my perspective, here's what a company must do in order to attract top interns, and convert them to full-time hires: * Be a great place to work (for interns and full-timers). Your interns will be with you for at least three months. They'll know within three days whether you treat your employees well. * Give the interns real meaningful work to do, where they can clearly see the impact to the company's customers & its bottom line. If you can do those two things, you'll attract great interns, and should be able to net some great full-timers as well.