Gone are the days of remedial tasks like coffee runs and licking envelopes with the promise of sitting in on important meetings. Today's interns are of a new breed — expected to walk, talk and perform like employees — except there is one tiny difference, in that most of them aren’t getting paid for their work.
As someone who has applied to, been rejected from, and held several unpaid internships, I have quite a few thoughts and can give more than one argument for why unpaid internships are the worst.
For starters, let's begin with the obvious: unpaid labour is wrong and downright classist. Now before you come at me for attempting to be “woke,” can you think of any job where working 40 hours a week, unpaid, is legal?
The idea that people can simply hop off to work full-time without financial remuneration means candidates who cannot afford to give free labour are significantly disadvantaged. They miss out on the chance to learn new skills, make valuable connections and gain experience in a real-world work environment, the literal point of an internship. No one should be put in the position of choosing career development over making rent. Companies exploiting those who can afford to work unpaid is a slap in the face to others, widening class divide and solidifying the idea that the more money you have, the greater value you offer to society.
Not all work experience is created equal either. While holding an internship will undoubtedly provide an intern with experience in a career field, more and more companies are refusing to see internships as legitimate professional experience during the hiring process. I cannot count the rejections I’ve received because I “lacked professional experience.” Despite having several internships accumulating a year and a half of experience in several major European cities, I was often met with excuses like “oh no, we mean paid experience” or “we want professional experience, not internships.”
So let’s say that you’re ok not taking a wage and you still want to get the experience in a real-world environment. Great! Now you have to land the internship. It’s not a secret that entry-level job positions these days have ridiculously high expectations (might be worth opening that can of worms another time), but today’s internships often have a list of requirements to rival full-time positions.
Why does an intern need to have a year’s experience to come work for free? Why does an intern need to possess all the hard skills required of your full-time employees? Do employers not understand the whole idea of an internship is to gain experience? Why should an intern need experience to gain experience?
Don’t believe me? Think I’m just complaining and that the situation isn’t that bad? Enter one of my experiences as a highly motivated individual. While I was studying for my master’s degree I went through 3 rounds of interviews at a company I really wanted to intern for. It should be noted that at this point I already had about a year’s worth of internships under my belt. I did 3 interviews, made a presentation, had visual aids and even had a CV which the company later used to go viral on Linkedin and in national newspapers….Spoiler: I didn’t get the internship.
When I asked why I was not seen as the best fit for this 40+ hour a week intern position, I was told that “the other candidate just had more experience.” I asked them if they forgot they were hiring for an internship and not a full-time paid position. The company still chose to value experience for an internship, all while acknowledging my potential and taking advantage of my creativity for free advertising. Tell me where that makes sense.
While there is still value in companies offering internships, they cannot and should not expect free labour. For the above mentioned reasons, it’s easy to see that unpaid internships serve to discourage young workers, take advantage of them and provide them with a list of reasons why they would never want to stay on and actually work for your company. If you want an employee, hire an employee — but maybe, just maybe you should offer a paid internship to a motivated freshly graduated student. Maybe you should value their drive, their intelligence, their willingness to learn and their potential, instead of expecting interns to be overqualified and ready to work for free. But then again, what can I say? I’m probably just salty I didn’t land that internship.
