Internships - the "Unpaid" are Here to Stay

I was re-reading Sonya's post on interning and I realized something was missing: no one in a hiring position commented on not paying interns. I hire at least two interns each semester (sometimes up to four or five) and most of them come from the local universities. We pay for parking, they get a year-long subscription to the magazine when they're done, they have access to whatever freebies and snacks we get, we pay mileage if we ask them to drive somewhere, and some of them even get to do paid assignments after they're finished if they did a good job during the internship. But paying them for being in the office 15 hours a week? We simply can't afford it. I'm not trying to jerk anyone around, but unfortunately, this is what "paying your dues" means nowadays. Is it fair? Nope. But the way the industry is going, can companies really afford to pay?

I took an unpaid internship at the magazine I currently work for after working full-time at a newspaper for a year. Yes, it was an adjustment but it was something I really wanted so I made that sacrifice. I had two other jobs to make up for the fact that I wasn't getting paid for the work I did during the internship. In my case, the unpaid internship turned into a paid one and that turned into a part-time job. I'm not saying everyone has to go that route, but my question is this: how much do you want it?

In "Take This Internship and Shove It," New York Times op-ed writer Anya Kamenetz posits: "What if the growth of unpaid internships is bad for the labor market and for individual careers?" In some cases, that's probably true, but it also means that students must do more research to find internship opportunities that will benefit them most in the long run. It doesn't make sense to work for a magazine—where you'll only get a couple of very short clips for three of four months of work—when you really want to be a newspaper reporter. During searches and interviews, be sure to ask very detailed questions about interns duties: What's a typical day like for an intern? To whom do interns report? Are there any non-monetary perks that come with the job ? Remember: Employers aren't promising to provide the "ultimate intern experience." They're just giving students a shot at seeing how the sausage gets made, so to speak. It's up to the student to make the most of his/her experience.

adl

p.s. Maybe this is just a magazine thing. Don't most daily newspaper internships still pay? I did four daily news internships when I was in undergrad and all of them paid...but that was 10 years ago.