When I left university I thought that I would have it easy, get a good job, move on with my life but a year and a half later I was still unemployed and demoralised.
Archive for April, 2009
I heard my boss on the phone today speaking to someone who needed an article proof-reading. His side of the conversation went something like this:
“Oh, I’ll give X a call… He’s got twelve interns; he will have someone who can do it for you.”
Alan Milburn calls for changes to system of internships
Published 04/14/2009 Campaigns , Westminster Leave a CommentRadical action is needed to break up the “closed shops” of the British professions in the face of new evidence that in the last 20 years the professional classes are increasingly being drawn from wealthier families, Alan Milburn, the government’s social mobility adviser, proposes today.
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I have been interning since November – doing an internship in London was out of the question as a) my parents don’t live there so I would not be able to live rent free b) my parents aren’t (and I’m definitely not!) rich. I still consider myself to be luckier than many as home is near Cardiff and there are a few opportunities to gain inroads here due to devolution. If I was in the same financial situation living somewhere else, I have no idea how I would get into politics/policy.
Government to create Internships for new graduates
Published 04/09/2009 Debate , Journalism , Policy 4 CommentsThe Government is drawing up plans to head off an unemployment crisis among the 400,000 graduates who will leave university this summer in the middle of a recession.
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Publishing is a thankless business, or so my experience this week tells me. I am writing because today I had to go to a book distributor and pick up 42 books and carry them to our office. The distributor and our office are two miles, and forty minutes apart – and I carried the books in a giant rucksack, a bit like the kind you see people use when they bum around South East Asia on a gap-year for six months.
w4mp.org's guide to being an intern
I am an employer. I own a business. I pay all the people who work for me. I pay for everything I use in my business. I do not expect, or get, any charity or any free handouts from anyone. Ever.
Well it was only a matter of time. After all, if politicians and policy units and think tanks and newspapers can take advantage of people’s willingness – and need – to work for free, why shouldn’t private companies? After all, ability to pay interns never put MPs off making them work for free, so why should it bother profit-driven corporations?
I was one of the lucky ones, only spending a couple of months on the intern mill before managing to get off. Now I have a job as a parliamentary researcher. But the continued existence of the unpaid internship industry continues to infuriate me.
Internships have a good side and a bad side. They are on one hand, an opportunity, an insight, an easy way into massive organisations, opportunities to make brilliant contacts and to work on important and interesting projects. But then, they can also be demoralising, dominated by tea making, checking that your boss’ invoices are in precise alphabetical order and sitting online, waiting for the day to end…
You’ve just graduated, looking for a first step in an “interesting career”, but should you have to work for nothing? Last week, we reported the story of Lancaster University student Danny Dewsbury who was asked by the Labour party to film footage of cabinet ministers for use at the party conference. While Labour treated him as a volunteer, Dewsbury believes the work he did earned him the right to at least the national minimum wage.
