MicroInterns is a marketplace for paid, one-to-four-week project work. Students get real briefs and a verified record of what they delivered. Startups and SMEs get the backlog task done without a hiring commitment.
MicroInterns Ltd was incorporated in December 2024 and works out of the ABVenture Zone at the University of Aberdeen.
MicroInterns started with a familiar problem seen from an unfamiliar angle: an international student in Aberdeen watching capable people get screened out before anyone looked at what they could actually do. Applicant tracking systems have always rewarded CV formatting over proof of work, and generated applications have made it worse. When a convincing CV takes seconds to produce, neither the software nor the person behind it can tell which claims are true.
On the other side of the same city sat startups and small businesses with a list of real, useful projects nobody had time to run: too small to justify a hire, too big to keep ignoring. The two shortages fit together once the unit of work is a project rather than a job.
It is not just skills that matter. Even AI can do skills. What matters is whether the person aligns with the mission and the values.
That is the whole idea. A scoped brief, one to four weeks, paid, with up to three students delivering in parallel in a managed workspace. The startup compares the results, and the students keep the proof either way.
Hiring should turn on work someone has actually done, rather than on how well a CV suits an applicant tracking system. A finished project is the evidence.
Unpaid internships filter for whoever can afford to work for free. Every MicroInterns project is paid, with the band on the listing before anyone applies.
One to four weeks fits around lectures on one side and a founder's runway on the other. Nobody has to bet a term or a quarter to find out it works.
Founder
Came to Aberdeen for an MBA and built MicroInterns out of her own experience as an international student watching capable people get filtered out before anyone saw their work. Finalist, Entrepreneur of the Year, Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2026.
Fractional COO and co-founder
Co-founded MicroInterns to make the student side of the marketplace work as hard as the startup side: the matching, the managed workspace, and the MicroSkill Passport record that outlasts each project.
UK StartUp Awards regional final, June 2026. Shortlisted for the UK national final, September 2026.
Great British Entrepreneur Awards, for founder Priyanka Rao.
Global Innovation Challenge 2025, Heriot-Watt University.
Heriot-Watt University.
The funders behind Micro-Pathways to Employment, and the programmes, accelerators and university partners MicroInterns has worked with across Scotland and the wider UK.
