What’s an Unpaid Internship Worth?
Over at Motherlode, the Times’s parenting blog, a father lays out his concerns for why he thinks his college-age daughter should consider doing an internship this summer rather than work as a camp counselor. He thinks an internship would give her a competitive edge in a tight job market where there will be padded resumes galore. Her argument: Fetching coffee and running errands for someone is less valuable than the actual work she’ll be doing as a counselor:
“What I do there matters,” she insisted. In several conversations, she told us about helping a camper cope with her mother’s debilitating depression and comforting others whose parents were fighting or separating, about aiding 11- and 12-year-olds who were coming to terms with their sexuality, battling anorexia, confronting body fear. She talked about the many hours devoted to water-skiing lessons, about instilling the confidence needed by awkward, gawky, painfully self-conscious 8- and 9-year-olds to stay prone in the water, hold on to the rope, then rise up and stay on their feet as the boat pulled away. “What’s more important than that?” she asked.
It’s a good point, and the father points to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers which concluded that an ”unpaid internship offers no advantage to the job-seeking student.” Students that are lucky enough to find paid internships fare much better in the job market.
It all depends on what you’re doing, of course. In my experience in the startup world, interns were not running around fetching coffee—they were building and coding applications that would be used by actual people. The two college-age interns I worked with at my old job taught themselves how to work in databases, and were building their own applications on the side. I was really impressed by them. They were paid $15 an hour. We also had a high school senior with little experience, but who was eager to jump in and learn whatever we threw at him. He came in twice a week, and was paid a stipend of $500 for the summer. (Though, I think the interns secretly spent a lot of time using turntable.)
Back when I was an unpaid internship for various media outlets, and basically working as an unpaid writer or copyeditor (and nobody was talking about whether or not that was illegal) I got to work with a few editors who actually wanted me to work my way up and find success. At the very least, they helped get me into grad school, and at the very most, helped me find paid work. I look back on my unpaid intern days through rose-colored glasses—it wasn’t so bad. The landscape is much different now.
Unpaid internships always make me think of this cartoon: http://bit.ly/LG2PMa.
I think the value of internships depends a lot on the field your in and obviously the work you will be doing. Being a glorified gopher is probably the worst thing ever.
I’ve worked two unpaid internships in museums that luckily were pretty great. The first was in college for a small museum’s fundraising team. I mostly made copies, filed, stuffed envelopes for events, and updated the database. It was menial stuff for sure, but I got to know that copier inside and out and learned generally what it meant to work in an office. As a perk, I also got to go a couple exhibit preview parties. It may not be the most exciting thing on my resume, but it definitely provided me with some necessary experience.
My second internship was much more fulfilling. I was in a graduate Museum Studies certificate program that required a 300 hour internship. I was lucky enough to one in the education department of a large museum. I hadn’t had any experience in museum education and I got a crash course in it. I also worked on several major projects and after my internship I was hired to work one of the programs I had helped develop.
So, I guess that is a long winded way of saying that I agree with the daughter.
To some extent, the value of an internship or work experience comes down to the field you want to go into. If this girl was studying psychology or child development, then working at a summer camp would make sense. But she doesn’t. She wants to make documentary films. Let’s brush aside how unrealistic this is as a career path for a moment and assume she could actually get an internship tangentially related to her field. In that case, she’s not exactly doing herself any favors by working with adolescents for the summer.
Now let’s assume she eventually realizes that we don’t all get our dream jobs and eventually have to settle for droning office work if we want to pay off our student loans. Is she really going to be better off applying to be an admin assistant or nonprofit coordinator if she takes another summer working at camp? No. She’s going to have a tough time selling herself for jobs outside childcare if the only experience on her resume is supervising youth archery lessons. She already possesses all the experience she’s going to earn through being a counselor; adding another year won’t make her more competitive. It will make her look unwilling to grow up.
In sum: kids these days don’t have the luxury of letting the Real World wait while they have their fun. She’s finishing her junior year of college. It’s time for her to get smart if she doesn’t want to wind up moving back in with daddy after she graduates.
@MuffyStJohn
I disagree completely. I think internships are very helpful in some fields for some people. I have had four internships that were fulfilling, educational, and paid. I don’t think they are the end-all-be-all of getting your foot in the door. You say that a camp will only be useful for psychology or child development. I think that’s really myopic. If she wants to make documentary films she has to experience life and have interesting stories to tell. I don’t think internships are necessarily helpful for people in the arts. Yes, at an internship you meet lots of people. But you also get a lot of exposure by actually starting to make things and putting it out there for people to see. I say the best thing for this girl to do is work her camp counselor job, work on telling interesting stories, and start making films and putting them online.
@Alexa Villaume@facebook
Just one quick thing – I think unpaid internships are ridiculous and people should put more value on their time and work. Even people just starting out. My first internship was underpaid, a small stipend, but I was given housing and a bike so I was able to live comfortably while working their.
@Alexa Villaume@facebook
Yes, exactly! Having multiple summers of paid employment at the same place on her resume is going to look a lot better when she’s graduated and is hunting for a survival job than a string of unpaid internships that may or may not be of any help in her potential film career. Don’t even get me started on the rampant exploitation of slave labor in the not-for-profit world. Someone looking to make a career in the arts needs to learn early and be reminded often: just because you would “do it for free” doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.
@MuffyStJohn but what if after giving up on the documentary dreams the nonprofit she applies to is rooted in community service and outreach, or what if the admin job she applies to is in children’s or YA publishing? What if the job is at a real estate office but the employer has fond memories of her own camp counseling days and would prefer to see a committment of that caliber–and man, I don’t know where the “having their fun” part comes in when working with kids, because all my friends who do so end their days about 50 times more exhausted than me–rather than an office internship comprised largely of coffee fetching and copying?
My point is that you can never be sure what a prospective employer will value or disregard when it comes to past work experiences. The skills gleaned from a steady committment to this camp might be perceived just as relevant as those learned elsewhere.
@Alexa Villaume@facebook Myopic, perhaps. But I also think it’s important to show potential employers a broad range of skills, which can be difficult to do if you’ve only worked one job, particularly since the competition is as fierce as it is.
@DickensianCat I see your point, but I also anticipate that other applicants to said admin job in children’s or YA publishing will have both experience working with adolescents/children/camp AND some additional office experience/demonstrable administrative skills/other work history. At least, I imagine this will be true of the ones who will get interviews. I think the scenarios you outlined were more common before there were hundreds of applicants for every entry-level position. These days it’s going to be really easy to toss out her resume.
And even if these scenarios did happen, she has already given herself the advantage by working at this counseling gig for many years. I’m not saying her counseling experience is irrelevant. What I’m saying is she already has that experience and one more summer will not add additional value. One summer in a decent internship (or even a crappy internship if she has good resume writing skills) would make her a much more well-rounded candidate.
@DickensianCat
I once got an entry level job at an ad agency (total survival gig but if I had wanted to work in the industry, I could have moved up from it easily) because I had years of waitressing experience. The CEO hired me on the spot because he believes there is no better general preparation for the working world than waiting tables. (He’s probably right!) You never know what skill or work experience on your resume is going to jump out at a potential employer, so you might as well be doing something you find meaningful or actually making real money, rather than slaving for free somewhere because someone else is convinced you need the “experience.”
@City_Dater Exactly! Waitresses bust their asses!
I’ve never waited tables, but I did retail, and I’ve never worked as hard in my life as I did working in a shoe store for a couple of summers. Being on my feet for 8 hour shifts, correctly maintaining and counting the cash drawer every night, applying discounts and verifying checks, not to mention cleaning and picking up after people who treat the place like their living room–an office job, even on busy days, never holds a candle to that. All these years later I still have this guilty sense of “getting away with something” for being able to sit at a computer most of the day, peck comments on the Billfold, and collect a paycheck :o)
I think part of the problem of the Great Intern Debate is that the word “intern” gets applied to very different things? To wit, if you’ve got adults (yes, college students are adults) doing work for you and you’re paying them $15 an hour, that’s a job. Maybe it’s a job that has a defined end date and pays less than the industry going rate, but it’s a job nonetheless. It’s different from assignments that are formally integrated into your career training or education (in the sense that you don’t get paid but do get necessary credits towards a larger goal) and different again from “come on down to the office and do odd jobs we can put together for you and we won’t pay your anything but you’ll see how the industry works.”
I got my start in my chosen career by working as a temp and bugging my agency to place me in sites that were vaguely related to what I wanted to do. I didn’t get paid much but I got my first real job that way. This was in 1999 so I have no idea if that still works but I still feel that’s a route with more dignity (and money) to it.
@jfruh It does still work.
@jfruh
Heh, and it’s used professionally as well. Until licensed (usually about 3 years out of school, -ish), architects legally must be called interns. Which, considering grad school and everything, means there are a fuck ton of 30 year old interns out there, who nevertheless are getting paid a (low, but still) living wage to do a real job.
I just finished a 6 week internship at a magazine, and never once did I fetch coffee. Instead, I wrote like a bajillion articles for their websites, went to beauty events (and got like $300 worth of free stuff), wrote like all the product review bits for the next issue of one of the magazines, organized AND wrote the new plastic surgery database (all of it, pretty much), got more free products, and made contacts in the industry that I can freelance for in the future. DEFINITELY WORTH IT. Oh, plus I got a surprise honorarium at the end, which paid for my transportation costs plus a bit extra.
@Megano! Oh, plus I learned the most important lesson, which is that I am very good at what I want to do, and I still love writing even after doing it day in and day out (including in my free time, because I have also started a blog with some friends from school, and still had to write 2 or 3 times a week for that).
In addition to echoing people who say “it depends on the industry,” I’d also say that it depends even more on the INTERNSHIP, and whether the work done there was substantive.
I’m involved in hiring some people for entry-level jobs in a highly competitive field right now, and I’d say a paid job doing anything is worth approximately 2.5 unpaid internships.
@stuffisthings I’d agree with you on this. I’m in public policy, so working for free is kind of a requirement. I managed to snag a good (unpaid) internship, without which I would not have gotten my last 2 jobs (my current job being my actual, literal dream job). A lot of kids in my field got suckered into living in DC for months on end while not getting paid and making photocopies, but I got to do real policy research in Baltimore where the living was cheap and the going was easy. Oh, and my supervisor there was also instrumental in getting me into the grad school of my choice. So basically the right internship can be pure, unadulterated win.
When I was in school, I was full on jealous of the kids who had time to have internships! My circumstances just didn’t allow for it at the time, but I wish I could have figured it out because a few decent internships would have really helped me network. (I hope that doesn’t sound bitter. I’m really not bitter about it in any way.)
Armed with that experience, I’ve been totally pushing for my 14 year old sister to get an internship somewhere. ANYWHERE! Because she doesn’t need money for anything (yet.) and any part time job she gets would be minimum wage anyway. And because it might help her get a little closer to the elusive “What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up”! Unfortunately she lives in a smallish PA town where internships might be hard to come by without some serious digging, and they might not want a 14 year old running around…but she’s responsible, I swear! Someone hire my sister!
Ahh, the arms race of unpaid internships continues. They’re both right. She will be at a disadvantage when applying to jobs in certain fields compared to people who already have internship experience and contacts in those fields. She will be a better, happier, more fulfilled and well-rounded human being for having been a camp counselor at the camp she grew up in. Ultimately, if all the demographic signaling in this article is as it seems (i.e. this girl is a white upper-middle-class/wealthy nice Jewish girl from the tri-state area) she’s already so heaped with privilege that it almost doesn’t matter which choice she makes. Since she’s already basically out of the internship game (a junior in college with zero internships is WAY behind–I had six before I graduated college) she’s most likely going to find her first job through someone her parents know or someone she’s already connected to anyway, so she may as well do something that makes her happy.
@Titania Really? SIX? I get leery when I see resumes with more than two, especially if they’re unpaid.
Have things changed that much since I graduated 6 years ago ish?
@stuffisthings Yup.
@stuffisthings I graduated five years ago, in 2007, so I can’t really say what kids are doing now. Had my first magazine internship as a sophomore in high school, did one every summer until I graduated college, and the last summer I had two (one three days a week, one two days a week) and got hired for my first job out of one of those. I don’t necessarily regret it–I’ve supported myself full-time as a writer and editor in NYC ever since–but I should have been a little less work-focused along the way. All but one of mine are unpaid, and I will totally cop to all of the advantages that growing up in the NYC suburbs with no financial need to work gives a person, because I had ‘em. I’ve rarely met anyone with more than mine; I’d say 3 is the norm now from the resumes I’ve seen.
I really value my unpaid intern experience. I work in film and went to school in NY, so while having paid internships sounded great, I found there really were not many paid options. By the time I graduated, I had completed six unpaid internships, and I did not have very financially supportive parents, so this meant a lot of weird part time jobs at odd hours and entire summers sleeping on friends’ couches so I wouldn’t have to pay rent. It was trying, and obviously some internships were more interesting than others, but I found it very beneficial. I had a job offer from one of my internships before I graduated, and I have tons of contacts who (at least sometimes) send my resume out when I am looking for the next show or project. I am now two years out of college and have had no more than a week between projects, and I think a lot of that has to do with how prepared I was because of my internships.
I’m just curious as to the distinctions everyone is making between paid and unpaid internships. How can you tell when hiring? Is that something that gets asked in interviews? Wages aren’t reported on resumes, and the only times I’ve had to list them have been when applying to low-paying hourly wage jobs.
I find it funny how few people are against unpaid internships but many people will raise hell about someone applying for food stamps. Well that tells you our priorities are as Americans.
Unpaid internships, I think are a reason so many media and fashion outlets are hiring or paying little to nothing since they know there are always people willing to work for free.
@chic noir Exactly! Besides essentially marking entire industries as “rich only,” unpaid internships depress wages across entire segments of the economy. They’ve basically turned being paid for your labor from a right into a privilege. Why hire anyone if you can get someone to do the same work for free?
I did a few internships during college, but mixed them in with retail jobs and a summering work as a field hand at a local farm. When I was interviewing for what became my first post-college job, one of the last things my interviewer said to me was that she really liked that I had worked on a farm.
I feel like doing manual work- really LABORING- speaks volumes about someone’s work ethic in a way that a summer spent in front of a computer (or in line at a coffee shop) cannot. Yes, you definitely can gain something from a stint as an office-based intern, but don’t be afraid to really get your hands dirty too, whether it be on a farm or wrangling kids at a summer camp.