Advice on how to implement internships

đź’¬ General Discussion
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At our school we have a (small) department that manages internships for students. I suggested to use SuiteCRM because it covers the part where they have to find and keep track of companies that would or could offer internships. For “companies” I can use the core module “Accounts”. For “students” I should probably create a custom module. But what to do with “internships”? There are various solutions, but I lack the experience to see which path to take.
The department will migrate to Dynamics CRM once that becomes available for them, so my SuiteCRM solution should be sold as a temporary fix (knowing full well that it could take years before Dynamics is ready).

Option 1: Follow the tips by https://konstantin.blog/2010/sugarcrm-applicant-tracking-system, in other words create custom modules “Candidates” and “Positions”.
Preferably I would have a relationship “Internships” with extra fields, so I could directly link a student to a company. In other words, if I open the detail view of a student I want to see the internship companies. And in the detail view of a company I should see the students. I found a video that explains how to do it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgidOKu3oHI) but it seems tricky. Other people suggest to just create a custom module for interships and then link both students and companies to internships.

Option 2: Go for a third party solution such as http://www.crm-recruitment.com/applicant-tracking-system
I am not a big fan of third party solutions because of the GDPR (we are based in Europe) and the costs. And it’s probably too difficult to sell this to the management.

Option 3: Try to connect SuiteCRM to an ATS such as OpenCATS.
I only found one post (https://forums.opencats.org/viewtopic.php?t=116) and it does not seem to be a good option or even possible.

Option 4: Recruitment module add-on
Mentioned in the OpenCATS post. I did not find any on https://store.suitecrm.com/suitecrm-modules though.

Option 5: Use the existing Sales module by selling an internship as a Product.
This would be the least intrusive as I would only have to rename the module, or create a product category “Internship”. But so far I haven’t managed to link a product to a company, or a student to a product.

We do not have any developers in house, so for any kind of custom work I am considering to hire someone through upwork.com.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

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Nicely described and seems interesting. Here how I see one of the solutions can be.
3 modules, Companies(Accounts), Internship(custom), Student(Custom).
Relationships:

  1. 1-M, Companies to Internship.
  2. M-M, Internship to Students.

In detail view of Companies, you will have an internship’s subpanel.
In detail view of Internship, You will have a related company(Account) and List of Students applied for as a subpanel.

Now in the Detail view of Companies, you want to see all the students who have applied for relative internship. A customized subpanel can be developed which will show the list of students.

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Thank you for your quick reply. Being able to create a custom subpanel will definitely make this a viable solution.

I’m just wondering whether it should be a 1-to-many relationship between Students and Internships as well since the internship that is connected to the company should be the same as the internship connected to the student? I should then also create a custom subpanel for the detail view of the student.

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1-to-many relationship between Students and Internships
This means an Internship refers to a single position(Student). If yes, then 1-to-many relationship Students and Internships is Correct.

Custom subpanel will be required to show the Students under the Companies.

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