What lengths should enthusiastic, bright young people go to in trying to secure their dream job? Moving to a big city? Learning the language of employers and filling in hundreds of application forms? Working 14 hour days, for meagre money? At Internocracy we regularly get contacted by young people who have spent the last few months working nine to five as an unpaid intern, then six to sometimes midnight in a bar or restaurant in order to fund an internship with their ideal employer.
Last Saturday, the Guardian broke the story that the Low Pay Commission is to investigate whether companies are exploiting thousands of graduates by employing them on unpaid, long-term internships during the recession. There are real concerns that employers may take advantage of the tough jobs market that faces those currently looking for employment in order to draft in fresh talent for free, dangling the possibility of a job in front of keen interns while not committing to helping them develop their skills or gain valuable experiences. Helping to perpetuate this attitude amongst employers is the lack of a coherent internship system or agreed standards.
Internocracy was set up as an attempt to bring interns and employers together to make internships better. Two of the main themes that come into discussions and emerge from our research time and time again as barriers are the issues of geographic mobility and quality of experience.
It fundamentally matters whether you’re from Cumbria or Camberwell in the internship opportunities that are available to you. It’s also a challenge if you have to move away from friends and family, find accommodation and start your internship only to find that a more accurate title for your role would be tea co-ordinator or photocopy executive.
What is Internocracy doing to challenge these issues? For a start, we’re working to develop more local internship opportunities with local employers from the public, private and third sectors. This is crucial, as there is a growing body of research (Greenbank and Hepworth, 2008 for example) which points out that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to go to university and then seek employment near the family home. Add to this the new incentive announced recently by the government for students who live at home whilst at university, and it is clear that local opportunities are only going to increase in importance.
Internocracy is also working with employers and interns to identify those organisations which really make an effort to provide a great work experience for young people, and a set of standards and quality mark based on internship good practice is in the pipeline. This will enable potential interns to gauge the opportunities available to them when they intern with a certain company, and the organisation will reap the rewards in the amount and quality of applications they receive for their internship programmes, as well as setting an example as a leader in managing young talent in their sector.
It’s time for organisations across sectors to recognise the value of running structured and engaging internship programmes, and recognising that the phrase ‘internship’ doesn’t translate as ‘free labour’ in any language.