Interns: make tea for free, get a job (maybe)
Perhaps New Start should offer internships. After all, as a national magazine, a past winner of the publishing industry ‘magazine of the year’ award, and a paragon of quality editorial coverage of the regeneration sector, ours would be a prestigious name on any hip-young-journalistic-gunslinger’s CV.
Yet for some reason I can’t foresee a queue of Sheffielders wanting to make our editor’s tea (although someone has to – he’s not very good at making it himself).
Maybe it’s because internships just seem so, well, southern. But really, as the government's social mobility adviser Alan Milburn pointed out this week here (http://tinyurl.com/socomob), they’re unfair and an outdated barrier to social mobility.
When New Start shared an open plan office in Waterloo with an exciting bunch of other social enterprises I was amazed at the number of people working for free for one of our neighbours, an energetic think tank.
They were all committed to their organisation’s cause, and doubtless many have gone on to find paid employment as a result. But it always struck me as ironic that an organisation (which will remain nameless, but was one of many think tanks that operate internships) devoted to social inclusion should perpetuate a system whereby only those with the means to work for free could gain the experience they needed to get a proper job in the sector.
Milburn’s right: “the internship process disproportionately merits the wealthy and those who live in the South-East, but often you cannot get a job in a profession without this kind of work experience”. We need to break this vicious circle.
Posted on Thursday, 16th April 2009 | This entry has 5 comments
Nick Temple | Thursday, 16th April 2009 | 04:06 PM
Great post, Jamie. I wonder which think tank that might be? ;0) There is an additional flipside as well which is if you hold to your value set (around social inclusion) your organisation can actually lose out on fresh thinking, additional capacity etc etc. in comparison with competitors.
We’ve had an intern the last couple of years from a little-known US university, and both times I think the experience has been mutually beneficial (indeed, we may now be paying one to come back)...but wouldn’t have been possible without the university’s travel fund. What this did mean is that it wasn’t an intern relying on their private wealth (eg. how do you live being an unpaid intern in London without family support?), but an established educational fund there for all their students. But it did mean pulling from a less diverse pool (i.e. only those already at university).
Tough to know how to solve this? Sponsored bursaries? Supported internships?
Jamie Veitch | Thursday, 16th April 2009 | 05:30 PM
Great to hear how it can be done well, Nick - and I know that it can be a beneficial experience both ways when it’s not exploitative. How to solve: certainly more bursaries and paid / supported internships would be good.
David Gourlay | Thursday, 14th May 2009 | 11:54 AM
We have recently taken on two young people keen to get experience in the World of regeneration consultancy work. They are both exceptionally motivated and clever. One we identified when he submitted an article for a national newspaper bemoaning the difficulty for students moving on into work. We recognised potential. We pay a wage to them, not exceptionally high as neither yet has the experience we really needed but they will develop and we will benefit and reward them in the long term. We would never dream of expecting people to subsidise our business by exploiting their predicament in the employment market. They add to the business so they should be paid for that.
Mide A. | Friday, 7th August 2009 | 04:38 PM
I stumbled on your article and I must say that I found it very refreshing. I say this because you aptly captured the predicament of a lot of graduates looking to intern in the area of regeneration, yours truly inclusive. I am very passionate about regeneration with academic qualifications to proof this. This passion has guided me towards being a student member of BURA.I remember how excited I was to find that with my yearly subscription, I would also receive copies of New Start Magazine. Naively, I thought that since I was new to regeneration in terms of experience, this magazine must be a great platform to cater for experienced and unexperienced professionals interested in a regeneration career. But after the third edition, It dawned on me the futility of such a thought . In my opinion, I think that this exclusion does not only reside with regeneration companies but also with associations such as BURA. I once wrote to BURA asking that apart from receiving industry magazines such as New start and “Regeneration and Renewal”, Is there any other support for student members ? The response I received was that there are subsidised training programmes. But most of the training events are so expensive for a student, it makes the concept painful. Now I am registered with a free matching placement service but I have been told that paid placements are very limited. It is as though one is being punished for not being wealthy enough to work for free. In relation to Nick’s comment, my university perhaps in recognition of this predicament just instituted a sponsored internship scholarship for 500 pounds only for the entire duration of the internship.As much as this effort is quite appreciated, I find it difficult to see how this would help much with costs. So what can be done? In all humility, I believe that there must be an increased level of support from recognised associations such as BURA for its student members as well as recognised regeneration companies. For instance, rather than publishing only senior roles, paid internships and graduate opportunities should also be taken into account.
Em | Monday, 5th October 2009 | 03:07 PM
I live in the south east, that does not mean I can work for free! Living costs here are much higher which can mean it’s even more difficult to take a month off work.