The End of the Unpaid Internship

[HVC]

First dibs on the entry level talent.  A couple of months of internship is more effective than a couple of hours of interviews when it comes to identifying promising candidates.

A three month long job interview doesn't sound too cost effective to me.

Given the cost of firing someone in a company with a very active HR department, it's not that expensive either.  And, in any case, it's also competition against other companies.  If the other companies offer internships and you don't, then you get to pick through the leftovers that the other company didn't want.

or you wait for them to get trained and then pick off the good ones from competitors. No training costs and no dealing wih duds.

[alfred russel]

First dibs on the entry level talent.  A couple of months of internship is more effective than a couple of hours of interviews when it comes to identifying promising candidates.

A three month long job interview doesn't sound too cost effective to me.

Given the cost of firing someone in a company with a very active HR department, it's not that expensive either.  And, in any case, it's also competition against other companies.  If the other companies offer internships and you don't, then you get to pick through the leftovers that the other company didn't want.

We bring in interns and then don't hire them. It is a waste of time. I wish we eliminated the program.

[DGuller]

or you wait for them to get trained and then pick off the good ones from competitors. No training costs and no dealing wih duds.

How do you know which ones are the good ones if they weren't interning in your company?  And why would the interns rock the boat, when they have a guaranteed gig for the most difficult job search of their career?

[CountDeMoney]

First dibs on the entry level talent.  A couple of months of internship is more effective than a couple of hours of interviews when it comes to identifying promising candidates.

A three month long job interview doesn't sound too cost effective to me.

Well that is how we do it in engineering.

That's what they do at big law firms for law students that actually bother to look around for intern stuff during law school.

[garbon]

 http://us.m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/conde-nast-ends-internship-program-181548307.html?.b=index&.cf3=U.S.+News&.cf4=2&.cf5=Yahoo+News&.cf6=%2F&.ts=1382582041&.intl=us&.lang=en

Condé Nast, the publisher of a wide variety of magazines including the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and GQ, announced it is ending its internship program beginning next year.

The move comes shortly after the publisher was sued by two former interns who claimed they were paid a salary below the minimum wage. Women's Wear Daily , which is published by Condé Nast, posted the news on its own site.

Condé Nast is not the only publisher that has faced or is currently facing lawsuits from former interns.

In 2012, Time magazine published a story detailing a class-action lawsuit against Hearst Corp., which owns Harper's Bazaar magazine. The suit was made on behalf of Diana Wang and other "unpaid or underpaid interns who worked at the company over the past six years."

Women's Wear Daily writes that "a judge threw out the case, but the intern appealed and the suit remains unresolved."

The conventional wisdom about internships is that they aren't so much about the money as they are the experience, and perhaps, a salaried position once the internship is over.

However, according to several studies, that is rarely the case. Several months ago, the Atlantic reported that, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, college students who've had unpaid internships are offered full-time employment (anywhere — not just at the company where they interned) just 1.8 percentage points more than students who never interned.

According to the NACE, 63.1 percent of students who had a paying internship received at least one job offer.

The Department of Labor hosts a fact sheet to help employers determine if interns are required to be paid minimum wage and overtime.

[Iormlund]

Hmm necro.

[garbon]

Hmm necro.

I bumped a thread from June with a recent development.

[Rasputin]

I don't believe that this ruling will stand, and if it does, then the only effect will be to eliminate internships.  Interns generally don't do wok that someone would be paid for, absent the intern (legal internships may be different).  Interns generally do make-work and optional stuff.  Every year, I work with students who intern (our seniors basically spend the last 4 weeks of the year on internships) and those who do work that someone would get paid for do so at such a low efficiency and high supervisory cost that no one would pay them to do it.

qft

[Rasputin]

First dibs on the entry level talent.  A couple of months of internship is more effective than a couple of hours of interviews when it comes to identifying promising candidates.

A three month long job interview doesn't sound too cost effective to me.

Well that is how we do it in engineering.

That's what they do at big law firms for law students that actually bother to look around for intern stuff during law school.

we pay clerks for a summer to evaluate potential future hires...they are worthless and its a three month long job interview


We also get lots of law students who volunteer for unpaid internships who wed never otherwise let in the front door...think of them as walk ons at alabama; they dont have a scholarship but they hope to brag to someone that they played at alabama or to hope against hope that they'll get noticed and earn a scholarship. These people want a line on their resume that reads "big firm llp, summer internship," and they all hope to wow us enough to hire them despite the lack of academic credentials.

this case hurts the chances for the future horatio algers in category two.

we will still have paid clerkships as we always did, but for those who couldnt get that opportunity, the walk on system may be killed

[crazy canuck]

If a company can not make an intern work, but can only train them, what's in it for the company?

And that is the attitude that has wrecked the internship model.  Too many employers see interns as free labour rather than students who are coming to learn.  When these things started out the motivation for employers was to be able to assess and get first dibs on good talent.   

[Zanza]

My employer pays our interns 750 Euro/month. When I did an internship in the US eight years ago, I got about 1.300 USD/month, which is barely enough to cover your living costs in a NYC suburb.

[Rasputin]

If a company can not make an intern work, but can only train them, what's in it for the company?

And that is the attitude that has wrecked the internship model.  Too many employers see interns as free labour rather than students who are coming to learn.  When these things started out the motivation for employers was to be able to assess and get first dibs on good talent.   

cc did you get my pm?

[crazy canuck]

First dibs on the entry level talent.  A couple of months of internship is more effective than a couple of hours of interviews when it comes to identifying promising candidates.

A three month long job interview doesn't sound too cost effective to me.

Well that is how we do it in engineering.

That's what they do at big law firms for law students that actually bother to look around for intern stuff during law school.

we pay clerks for a summer to evaluate potential future hires...they are worthless and its a three month long job interview


We also get lots of law students who volunteer for unpaid internships who wed never otherwise let in the front door...think of them as walk ons at alabama; they dont have a scholarship but they hope to brag to someone that they played at alabama or to hope against hope that they'll get noticed and earn a scholarship. These people want a line on their resume that reads "big firm llp, summer internship," and they all hope to wow us enough to hire them despite the lack of academic credentials.

this case hurts the chances for the horatio algers in category two.

we will still have paid clerkships as we always did, but for those who couldnt get that opportunity, the walk on system may be killed

Agreed.  I think the practice of law is somewhat different.  The law students are actually learning something (about the practice of law - rarely the law itself) and getting a real benefit from being able to say they had the experience.

In the time before time it wasnt uncommon for most law students to work for free for the experience.  The crazy salary wars for unproven junior lawyers in the 90s went a long way to ending that.  But now there is more of a hybrid approach as you described.

[crazy canuck]

cc did you get my pm?

Yeah, but it was someone else asking the question.  I am not sure if you sent the PM to him and I was copied (that is what I assumed happened) 

[Razgovory]

cc did you get my pm?

Yeah, but it was someone else asking the question.  I am not sure if you sent the PM to him and I was copied (that is what I assumed happened) 

You must get a lot of Emails, cause my old email provider had a line explicitly for cc.