Interns Anonymous

Eastern promise: interning abroad can be a better option

Published 03/30/2012 Debate 5 Comments
Tags: Egypt, experience abroad, internships in Cairo, internships in the middle east, Journalism, NGOs, volunteering abroad, voluntourism

I just want to share my internship/job experience working for NGOs in the Middle East…I know this is quite a specific field, but my story has some relevance to many of the issues you are discussing. I have a vague ambition to work in International Human Rights, specifically with regards to the Middle East, and decided to take a year out of my degree and come to Cairo for a year to get some work experience.

Here, I had the rather shocking experience of, after a month, getting a salary from my current NGO, who insisted if I was working I had to be paid. Soon later, I got a contract, as I asked for job security so I could plan my year properly. As you could guess, many NGOs in the developing world struggle with funding and have nothing like the resources available to private sector companies back in London. (The coordinator for my organization hasn’t been able to give himself a salary for the past couple of months, making do with money from other consultancy work he does.) Yet many organizations here still manage to pay their interns/and or hire fresh graduates. I have other graduate friends who are working or interning with NGOs in the region, who are even provided with accomodation. (My journalist friends, interested in foreign affairs, have had similar experiences here, being paid for their work and interning in English language newspapers, and due to the comparative lack of competition in Cairo, they have had work about the city published in national newspapers in London.)

In contrast, I have many friends back in London who have degrees, and masters. They have been interning for human rights groups, think tanks and NGOs for months without pay, working in bars to sustain a living. To those friends, and others who want to work in international development, I’d say brave the unknown and leave London and get experience on the ground for a few years. You’ll find you’re presence is much appreciated, and it often shows in pay, actual job titles and respect.

I’d also say to those who want to work in international development, not to look for jobs on the internet from home, but to save up money for flights, take a risk and go out there. Native English speakers are always in demand, and particulary in unstable countries where a lot of foreigners leave, internships often lead to job offers. My organization and all my other NGO worker friends say they never look at applications coming from outside Egypt, due to a) the hassle of organizing interviews and b) the very real possibility that although an applicant might like the idea of working in the Middle East, in reality many people find the life difficult and quickly leave. It is also crazy to take internships in developing countries that you practically have to pay for, i.e. volunteer tourism. Again, I stress, if you actually get out there, there are many many organizations who would love to have someone work for free for them. There is simply not the same internship culture to compete with. I have now been offered a permanent job, but it is with regret, I will have to return to England to study…and continue my work experience unpaid, doing things that after a year of an intense job, I feel slightly overqualified for.

I just find it insane that most local NGOs here at least pay stipends to their interns, but back in London, organizations apparently can’t afford to. Yes, there is a difference in living expenses; my £350 a month allows me to get by in Cairo, but even that amount would be better than nothing in England. I guess benefits to interns in other parts of the world comes from a society which finds the thought of unpaid work pretty confusing. And I think this is mentality we should re-adopt.

What the hell, NHS?

Published 02/23/2012 Public Sectpr Leave a Comment
Tags: NHS, NHS unpaid work, psychology, psychology assistant, what the hell NHS

Someone brought this to our attention – an advert for an unpaid psychology assistant position – click here for the full text. You need to commit to two days work per week for 6 months but NOTE, they will “look favourably on people who could make a greater commitment”. So you mean you will look favourably on people who can BUY A JOB? For goodness sake, I know the economy is in the shit and the government has less than no money but the NHS budget is ring fenced, you think they could bloody well shell out £6,000 for a part time assistant position. If only to adhere to NMW Law.

Fashion, fashion, fashion

Published 02/13/2012 Debate 1 Comment

After interning, Lauren set up a campaign…what a great idea!

My name is Lauren Briggs and I’m a third year Fashion Communication student at Northumbria University. It can be quite daunting to be faced with graduation this year when Fashion is known to be one of the most notorious industries for exploiting interns. The demand for work experience today is probably at the highest it’s ever been and I’m soon to be catapulted straight into the frantic internship system.

I’ve already dipped my toe into the industry as an intern. My one-month unpaid placement within the press office of a well-known high street brand opened my eyes to the real problems of internships.

Although my experience was an enjoyable and worthwhile one, the tasks set out to me were essential to the company and would have been carried out by a paid employee if I had not been present. I believe I should have been paid for the work I was doing. The travel expenses the company provided me and my own savings were just about enough to fund my month in London. Unfortunately therefore, I could not carry out the second placement I was recommended for by my supervisor at the time with a very well known PR company. This placement would have improved my CV considerably and perhaps led to a job opportunity.

The company I was with took on two or three interns every four weeks to carry out a list of day-to-day duties that were essential to the business. I worked alongside two other interns who, like me, were trying to get as much experience listed on their C.V.’s as possible and had already made their way through three or four internships in the past year. I asked them how they could afford to intern for so long without any pay and they both replied, “I can’t!”.

Another thing I discovered whilst I was interning was the difference in respect I received. The employees I worked alongside in the office were all very lovely and treated me very well, however as soon as you are introduced to members of staff outside the office as “the intern”, you’re somehow immediately relegated to so many things – unnoticed, unimportant and unnecessary. It is understandable why the majority of people look at interns in this way; perhaps because we are there to learn and experience the industry and therefore carry no importance or relevance to the paid members of staff working hard at their paid jobs, however interns often work just as hard, if not harder than some paid employees. Think about it, interns are constantly trying to impress and forever trying to stand out and therefore get the job done to the absolute best of their ability.

The feedback I received from an anonymous intern in my own research on the subject validates this. She was working at a very well known fashion house alongside 11 other interns. There were only 6 members of paid staff. The interns worked 12 hour shifts with a half an hour break whilst the paid staff often went home hours earlier. The jobs the interns were given were more demanding, more essential to the designer and made up the majority of the workload.

I’ve heard the same kind of story from so many interns across the UK and I’m eager to see change. The action taken by HM Revenue & Customs is the first step towards change, but I hope this move will advance further and influence other industries to pay their interns.

My own experience as an intern has inspired me to start my own campaign, The Internship Project, www.theinternshipproject.com. The main aim of the campaign is to promote the enforcement of the National Minimum Wage and work primarily with interns, students, graduates and young people to make internships fairer. The campaign launches on the 16^th February 2012 and I hope that I can gather as much support as possible to really make a difference.

Typical…

Published 01/24/2012 Debate Leave a Comment

Thanks to Kim for posting this!

Good experience at Shortlist magazine

Published 01/19/2012 Debate 1 Comment

We’re pretty sure this is written by a real person who interned at Shortlist, rather than their marketing team being sneaky…we’ve learnt to recognise the tone of those emails

A two-week placement from heaven. For starters upon arrival on the first day, the editorial assistant immediately came to meet me. And I wasn’t just sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Once they had set me a story and I proved that I could write, I was literally sourced out to other members of the team and actually got to write things that were published. And everything I wrote was assessed and critiqued by either the editorial assistant or the news editor, so you knew where you were going right or wrong.

Yes, some days there simply wasn’t much to do, as a lot of the features were done in advance. But the people in the office were friendly. The most menial task I had to do was sort out the mail once a day. But to be fair, it helped me to learn everyone’s name and where they sat. And this placement involves putting you in the heart of things. Surreally enough, tea-making duties are shared out. So at one point, the editor made me a cup of tea! When the news team had a meeting for story ideas you were expected to not only attend, but to actually contribute and have ideas. And I was reimbursed for my expenses like travel and lunch.

Towards the end of my placement they put me into contact with another magazine that offered me a two-week placement on the basis of their recommendation. All in all, a good place to work for. And more freebies than you can carry, if you make friends with the reviews editor and the senior writer

Having read through all the things that people have said, yes, internships can be shit. They expect a lot of you, and some don’t even have the decency to reimburse you for your travel, let alone your lunch (cough cough, Wonderland). But for every shit one out there, there are a few good ones, where you will make good contacts. Keep on trying!!!

Making a complaint against your employer

Published 12/12/2011 Debate Leave a Comment

HMRC and Interns Anonymous have teamed up and prepared guidance for any interns who think they might be entitled to claim back the National Minimum Wage.

HMRC are responsible for enforcing the National Minimum Wage. Recently they have launched a ‘dynamic response unit’ (they are like a SWAT team of tax inspectors) to ensure that interns are paid the National Minimum Wage.

The guidance takes you through the whole process of claiming back any due wages. You can claim wages up to six years after you completed the internship. So even if you have moved on to a new job, you can still claim back wages.

If you have completed or are presently undertaking an internship and think you may be entitled to the National Minimum Wage, you can speak confidentially to the pay and rights helpline on 0800 917 2368.

Read it here.

Unspeak

Published 11/13/2011 Debate 4 Comments
Tags: the economist, unspeak

Ok sorry we haven’t posted much up blah blah, we haven’t even linked properly to our Guardian front page (oh by the way did I mention we were mentioned on the front page of the Guardian?)…in the meantime here is a link to a post we missed on a great blog ‘unspeak’, which unpicks the meanings implied and constructed by political language or articles in the press. The post in question beats the hell out of an article in the Economist, which was published in September- we really should have seen this sooner and for that we are truly sorry.

Archiving Interns Anonymous

Published 11/08/2011 News Leave a Comment
Tags: British Library web archive, Interns Anonymous archive

It is with a large dose of geek joy that I read an email we just received from the British Library Web Archiving programme- they want to archive Interns Anonymous as part of their project to ‘represent aspects of UK documentary heritage’. This means they take care of every part of the site, even backing it up on a hard drive (in case the internet breaks?), so researchers in the future can read it.

As a history PhD-er, I’m pretty up for seeing something I co-set up become history before my very eyes…as our Policy-Officer-Hero-of-the-Hour, Joseph Thomas says, ‘I never doubted whether we were culturally significant. I think this warrants a blog post’.

If you’re reading this, future researcher, you can imagine me sitting in a cafe writing this, imagining you reading this.

Rosy Rickett

IdeasTap has some exciting opportunities for y’all

Published 11/05/2011 Arts Leave a Comment
Tags: arts internships, ideastap, intern column, intern x, paid internships

The arts charity IdeasTap is looking for an arts or media intern to write a weekly anonymous column about their experiences at the bottom rung of the career ladder. Whether you’re interning as a journalist, PR, on a film set or in a theatre, they want to hear from you. The winner will be paid £100 per 500-word column. Intern X will be taking over from IdeasMag’s current anonymous columnist, Actor X.

Applicants must be interning regularly in order to be eligible, as the column will run for an indefinite period of time. It is fine to complete several internships during your reign as columnist, as long as the placements more or less follow each other. Apply here. Applications close on Tuesday 22 November at 5pm.

IdeasTap is a creative network and funding body for emerging arts talent, and IdeasMag is their in-house publication, featuring interviews with successful creatives and advice on making it in the arts. They are also currently recruiting two paid office interns– one in editorial, another in development.

Young, rich and working for free…

Published 11/03/2011 Westminster 7 Comments
Tags: Nepotism, rich interns, Westminster

Hi,

The following isn’t a direct account of my own experience, it’s that of a friend’s. I keep reading about “people with affluent parents” or “people who can afford unpaid internships”, but here is an example of that in practice.

I myself have done a handful of short unpaid internships, but luckily they were only a few hours a week so I managed to stay on the dole/in a job at the same time, and the organisations really needed the help – they weren’t for profit and did a lot for the local community. I would recommend the odd 2 week internship to those who can manage it, but the fact that I am in a good job right now is partly down to my adamant decision to never consider long term unpaid internships, whether or not I could somehow save up the money to do it. I’ve been extremely fortunate, but I was determined to hold out for a decent paid job.

My account is a clear example of how the unpaid internship culture of this country is working. An acquaintance of mine – who I met through a paid internship – has long complained to me of her boyfriend’s laziness and unwillingness to find a calling in life. When we interned together, she would tell me about how he barely scraped through his degree, as he was uninterested in the subject, and was being propped up in a house that had been bought for him by his wealthy parents. After graduating, and not necessarily wanting to enter the world of work yet, he went straight into a History Masters (presumably paid for by said wealthy parents). She told me about how he nearly failed a lot of his modules and had to resit, taking 2 years to complete the degree. At this point I didn’t want to make any judgements, some of my most intelligent and hard working friends and relatives had been through similar issues at university, however, I didn’t exactly expect the following to happen to this guy.

My friend often talked to me about how she debated whether or not to even stay with her boyfriend on the basis of him not wanting to get a job, or have any interest in a career at all. Fast forward a few months, and his ‘contacts’ have found him an unpaid internship with his local MP (his first job ever). It turns out that the job is going to be based at Westminster, and it’s unpaid. Here’s the point where most people would start looking for something else, because living and working in London for 4 months unpaid is well out of most peoples’ reach, regardless of how great an opportunity it might be. Fortunately this young man has wealthy loving parents to support him. This doesn’t seem too shocking, except for the fact that my friend keeps bragging about his £600 per week flat by the river. In Westminster. Almost every other day they update their Facebook profiles with pictures of them enjoying meals out and drinks after work. Those are the kind of treats that unpaid interns should be able to reward themselves with, right?

I don’t imagine that this has been anything but the norm for years, but it’s sad that someone who really didn’t have to work hard, or show any interest in politics at all, is on the fast track into Parliament, when I also know of really hard working individuals with years of experience, still struggling at the very bottom of the politics ladder.

Something’s wrong here, isn’t it?

Battle of Ideas

Published 10/31/2011 Debate 1 Comment
Tags: Battle of Ideas

Yesterday I, Rosy, took part in what people call a ‘lively’ round table discussion. I was looking forward to the table actually being round like in King Arthur but unfortunately it was a regular oblong shape. The debate was entitled ‘Interns or Slave Labour’ although I like to think that none of the people who basically represented the ‘anti-exploitation/pro-social mobility’ side of things (Susan Nash of Young Labour, Owen Jones of ’Chavs: the demonization of the working class’ also that newsnight with Starkey) would compare unpaid internships to slavery. Because that would be wrong and also highly offensive to the memory of slavery (and indeed to slaves today).

The debate basically split along the following lines:

Rob Killick, CEO of cScape, was pro unpaid internships as a way for businesses to get free labour and interns to get a foot up into the job market. He also suggested that young people have been trained for the wrong businesses and that, more controversially, they are to some extent, spoilt, lazy and unwilling to work hard.

Stephanie Lis works for The Freedom Association, which is kind of like grass roots Thatcherism, basically promoting freedom of choice and small government. Her point was that if people want to intern unpaid, they should be allowed to.

Susan Nash, chair of Young Labour, stood against unpaid internships because they shut those from poorer backgrounds out of certain professions and she wanted to see the enforcement of NMW regulations

Owen Jones was the same, coming down harder against the ways in which internships reduce social mobility and setting this phenomena against the wider context of the change in employment practice in industries like journalism (ie. of the 100 top journos in the country, over half are privately educated- a big change from the 50s, when traineeships etc meant that more journos came from working class backgrounds)

And me, I wanted to add something to the debate by bringing in the anecdotal evidence we receive everyday- and basically confirming that the notion of free choice will only ever extend to those who can afford to take that choice.

Owen and Rob had a few heated exchanges about the class system in the UK and whether or not we should live with it or strive to change it; Rob blamed young people’s poor life chances variously on the economy, their own laziness and the work ethic of eastern european migrant workers and the Chinese; and the rest of us responded as the above synopsis of our views would suggest.

The audience, as always, were the most interesting element of the debate. And this is where y’all should comment- questions like…

What can young people do to create jobs?

Isn’t being young and trying to get a job supposed to be hard?

How can we compete in a global economy?

Were my parents wrong to work hard and pay for my University education, given its in the Arts and in many ways now appears to be ‘useless’?

If there are, let’s say, 10 internships and 5 are paid, 5 unpaid- and then the unpaid ones have to go because of a crackdown in the law, what’s the point of that? Isn’t that restricting opportunities?

Thoughts on postcards please…

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