<p>MSN</a> Careers - Why it can pay to take that unpaid internship - Career Advice Article</p>
<p>Thought some of you may find this interesting as it is the time of year to start looking for internships.</p>
<p>Not really any new info.</p>
<p>I did an unpaid internship with my state senator. Didn’t think I got much out of it until it came time to write my grad school essays. I’ve been able to draw heavily from my experience. Good article.</p>
<p>My university department requires all undergrads to complete a part-time unpaid internship. The reason we want it to be unpaid - and we check - is that the difference between an internship and an entry level job should be the types of tasks completed. We also ensure that our students are actually having a preprofessional experience, even if in union shops that merely means shadowing an exec and sitting in on meetings, rather than just making copies and fetching coffee. </p>
<p>For D2, by far her most valuable work experience was working (paid) for a very difficult person. It not only gave her some transferrable job skills but a great answer to several interview questions! Sometimes the short-term negative becomes a long-term positive…</p>
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If the university requires it, then it’d be for credit - right? If it’s for school credit then it has to be unpaid.</p>
<p>I don’t think the fact that the internship is unpaid vs paid lends it any credibility or makes it any more viable. In many cases the jobs themselves are exactly the same - the person just informs the place whether it needs to be unpaid due to the fact that it’ll be for college credit.</p>
<p>The key, like you say, is the actual job being performed whether paid or unpaid - i.e. whether it’s significant experience or just being a gopher.</p>
<p>well, one minus is that in many, if not most, cases they violate federal labor laws.</p>
<p>As if the wealthy aren’t raking in enough dough without flouting labor laws and having people working for them for NOTHING…</p>
<p>I did an unpaid internship at a think tank and with the federal government.</p>
<p>They allowed me to progress to paid internships and a job doing exactly what I wanted to do.</p>
<p>D did unpaid internships for the mayor’s office, a pr firm run by a “celebrity name”, a major theatre/film producer, a major film company that has branched out to Broadway and a major Broadway casting agency. </p>
<p>It appears that in “glamour” fields that are in high demand, the way in is through unpaid internships. Do I think that they take advantage of eager beginners? – Yes, most definitely! D had real responsibilities at many of those jobs that should have been performed by entry level PAID employees. Plus only people who can afford to not get paid can even take advantage of this opportunity</p>
<p>However, D has built up a strong resume and finally has a paid job with a managment company/ producer. I know she would not have gotten the position without the experience and connections she made at her internships.</p>
<p>D has done several unpaid internships (for credit). Two government agencies, one Fortune 500 company. In my mind, these have been huge learning experiences for her, both in terms of substance and in terms of real-world life experience. </p>
<p>The only negative so far that I can tell is that they have on occasion caused her a lot of stress–trying to be a good intern plus fulfill all of her other obligations sometimes left her feeling stretched thin.</p>
<p>My D’s unpaid internships were during the school year, part-time. Her summer jobs were paid. This is the best situation in my mind, as she got experience and contacts from the internships that I feel helped her land a job after graduation, but she could still work for pay in the summer. An advantage of a school near a large city with convenient nearby internships.</p>
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<p>Yet another case where the starting line is different from those from non-wealthy families. Those who have to work during the summer or academic year because they are not from families with lots of money find this route into desirable careers limited or closed off.</p>
<p>Yeppers, ucb. Yet ANOTHER way that the wealthy and their spawn have the skids greased for them. no way can a kid on significant financial aid afford to make no money during the summer.And if the internship is not in the student’s hometown, s/he is on the hook for room and board in the remote city.</p>
<p>Plus, of course most lower and middle class families don’t have the elite connections to even be offered many of these plum positions in the first place.</p>
<p>This is good news. D is going to apply for a paid internship, but if she doesn’t get it, she’s going to ask them if she can work as a volunteer.</p>
<p>It’s funny how all the unpaid internships that students want are with companies or organizations large enough and successful enough that they could easily afford to pay their interns.</p>
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<p>However, there are some schools that will replace the student contribution from summer earnings if the student works an unpaid internship or a public service internship</p>
<p>The huge plus of unpaid is that it means there are many more internships available in a world that is demanding you have experience for entry level jobs. </p>
<p>If internships must be paid as some desire, there will be far less available. Women nd minorities will be hardest hit, least experienced job applicants, of course.</p>
<p>I am not thrilled with the current unpaid internship situation. </p>
<p>Even for wealthy folks that can “afford” to have the darlings dilly dally around some glamour jobs for the summer – don’t you think that actually earning a paycheck and paying one’s own expenses out of that possibly meager check is an important experience. And there <em>are</em> work expenses – transit, lunch, appropriate attire etc.</p>
<p>S2’s degree included having to do an 11 week unpaid internship for 9 credit hours. It had to be full-time work with a total of 400 hours work time that had to be documented by the employer.
It was to be completed during his senior year. It was up to him to find an internship that was directly related to his major…Criminal Justice. </p>
<p>He got lucky and landed the one intern slot at a Sheriff’s Dept. It went well. He learned a lot and had a chance to work in every area of the Sheriff’s Dept. Some of his friends did get “gopher” jobs just to fulfill the requirement.</p>
<p>I am not a fan of unpaid internship. More often than not it is a waste of time for interns. By definition, if it is unpaid then people are not going to care if they are wasting intern’s time. D1 only did one for 3 weeks, but she was looked after by the head of department, so they made sure she was invited to many client meetings and calls. Frankly, when I see an internship on someone’s resume, I’ll drill down to see what the applicant contributed to the business and how involved he/she was.</p>
<p>My D did an unpaid internship in her very specialized field last year. She did such a good job and brought much needed expertise, so within the first two weeks the board of directors had turned it into a paid summer position. She has kept in contact with the institution through the school year and been a very big help in dealing with the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. She was asked to be the project manager on a conservation emergency (paid) during this winter break. She has also made incredible contacts, learned things she wouldn’t have otherwise and gained even further experience in her field. I hate to say it, but it does look good on her resume to show the specific tasks, projects and outcomes that she has achieved in the aftermath of the hurricane. Yes, we can afford to float her financially (particularly since she is cheap and saved every penny from her paid school year position), but if we couldn’t she would have done what her sister did, which was to wait tables in the evening. No shame in that, either.</p>
<p>As someone who owned a small business then eventually sold it, I could not have paid interns to learn. I never had interns but one or two interns would’ve been nice. They’d probably do some menial tasks but in the process would’ve seen the building of a business. The deals that are done and the tedium of due diligence and the daily grind of trying to get business and trying to make a profit.</p>
<p>I now work for one of biggest corporations in the world. We have paid interns but not a single intern contributes anything of value to the company, they learn a ton, see a lot but their salary is charity, not earned.</p>
<p>Bottom line, the small businesses that can teach the most and provide the most opportunity for contribution usually can’t afford paid interns. The big businesses that can afford to pay, get nothing of substance from those they pay except to plant the idea in young skulls that they may be the company they want to work for after graduation.</p>
<p>If you think interns should be paid, you greatly overvalue what they can actually do for that money and greatly undervalue what they can learn and gain from work experience.</p>
<p>And if interns are required to be paid by law, then you’ll see the number of available internships shrink to a very small number that only accept a select few. Getting an internship will become like getting into Harvard - 35,000 applications for 2,000 positions. When that happens, you’ll be on here complaining about the selection criteria used for internships.</p>
<p>Let’s not go there.</p>