There may come a time in your life when you will be offered an unpaid internship. Unpaid is probably the word people dread the most. Now, before you say yes or no, you should consider the pros and the cons.
Let’s start with the cons of an unpaid internship.
· No pay (obviously). Unless you are finical stable (and lets be honest; most college students aren’t) then having an unpaid internship could cause a lot of stress. Since you won’t be paid for your work, you may have to find a part-time job, as well.
· Limited amount of experience. With an unpaid internship there is a limited amount of what you can do. The real projects will go to employees and you might be stuck working on the research.
· Waste of time. Sometimes these internships could be a waste of time because you are stuck doing the work no one else wants to. There are not many hands on activities. You are usually stuck doing the research or holding equipment for the real employees.
Since you are probably now dreading the fact about having an unpaid internship, here are the pros.
· Experience. Internship give you experience that you need for jobs in the future. Most jobs won’t even look at your resume unless you have some sort of experience.
· Connections. When you have an internship you will be able to meet tons of people that you would never be able to meet. You will be able to hear stories and get advice from tons of people.
· Door opener. Having an internship while open many doors for you on your future career. For example, I worked for TulsaPeople magazine and seeing that on my resume could open many doors in a journalistic field.
· Too see if it could be a future job. If you have an unpaid internship then it is a good way to see if you would want to further education in that field. You get to see everything that it takes to be apart of that and if you will be able to handle it.
· College credit. Since you are not getting paid for this internship some colleges offer college credit. So you will be getting some credits out of the way while doing something you enjoy.
Since obviously there are a lot of pros to having an unpaid internship, there still are cons that need to be taken into consideration. If you are debating if this is right for you, make your own pros and cons list. I have had a unpaid internship and might take one this summer,even though I won’t be getting college credit for it. The experiences are unforgettable and are great resume builders.