The Intern Epidemic
Here is a post many will agree is long overdue. The number of interns and more importantly the percentage of interns in relation to an organization’s overall size has rapidly increased over the last several years. Perhaps the economic decay acted as a catalyst for the “intern epidemic,” or maybe it is simply because businesses are legally allowed to employ free labor, but, whatever it is, I think internships have exploded and spawned into something they weren’t when I first remember interning while in High School.
This is not the case of every business “employing” interns, but I think many businesses have realized entry level positions have gone the way of VCRs and are increasingly becoming useless, so they thus begin eliminating entry level positions that are now to be filled by unpaid interns. Again, I stress this is not true of all firms with entry level positions, but many require the new employee to do meaningless tasks I believe will soon be outsourced. Can anybody even doubt one day soon there will be an executive whose “administrative assistant,” aka secretary will be an aspiring Bollywood actress answering calls from India? While one of the main benefits of interning is the ability to see if you, the intern, likes the industry you’re interning within, doesn’t it seem meaningless to have interns doing the tasks that will one day be unneeded?
A second flaw I find with businesses employing interns, especially start ups, is the percentage of interns in relation to the business’ overall size. I’m borderline embarrassed to say I interned without pay for a “company” with more interns than full time employees! As an unofficial official guideline to hiring interns, I want to recommend to employer’s a proper ratio approach. At a minimum, a firm should employee 2 full time (and paid!) employee’s for every 1 intern (paid or unpaid). The ratio strategy is similar to what you will find at a nightclub where the full time employees are girls and the interns are guys (sorry guys). Girls are of more value to nightclubs for obvious reasons, so they are the businesses full time employees while the interns are the guys who are less valuable.
I’ll continue on with the nightclub example to mention how a business can determine whether or not they need to compensate interns. When there are too many guys (interns) and not enough girls (full time paid employees), money is usually involved at the door of most nightclubs where the guys are forced into table service. Money acts as the equalizer to make sure the group is bringing something to the table (literally). So, in the office type of situation, for an intern to actually get something out of the internship, shouldn’t there be more full time employee’s around to impart wisdom? How much is the intern going to learn if he or she is mainly amongst people with the same skill sets and level of education? So, at least if you’re not going to learn too much as an intern, you might as well be paid, right?
Then, there are always the people who will say “internships are so vital to have on your résumé.” While this may have been true of most internships in the past (where, from my memory, internships were a little tougher to attain), what part of doing something meaningless is important for a future employer to see on your résumé? If an intern isn’t truly active in helping with the decision making processes and execution (the things of value), allowing them to show off their creativity, how valuable is intern experience to a future employer? On the reverse side of the coin, if the employer views a résumé with useless typical internship-esque bullet points all over the place and actually buys into the “internships are vital” viewpoint, how much should anybody really long to work for that employer? The employer clearly does not understand ideas and creativity are at a premium, not commodity type functions the résumé claims the applicant is fluent in. So I ask, with that hiring mentality, how long do you think it will be until that company goes the way of the VCR?
While I agree many great opportunities are the result of internships, the point of this post was to expose some of the negative, but often true aspects that come along with “the epidemic.” If you are an intern, ask yourself “am I a mere plug covering a hole in the ship (that is the business) bound to sink?,” or “am I helping charter the seas?” If you’re an employer, it is important to understand your duties when hiring an intern. It is your responsibility as the employer to make sure interns are doing meaningful work. Lastly, I apologize to employers who just lost their intern(s) who just read this post.
