As the Spring quarter begins and all college students begin to enjoy the sunny lawn again, it’s also the time to continue internship searching for the summer! The end of the school year means the beginning of our longest break, which gives us three months to fill our days with plans, vacations, rest days, jobs or other work opportunities. While summer internships and work experience in the field you are interested in are all incredibly important aspects of a college education, some of them can fail to adequately prepare you for the work force or seem deceitful. For anyone new to applying for internships, here is everything I learned from being a part of two exploitative internship programs!
While this may make me sound like a pessimistic person, if your internship seems far too good to be true, it might raise cause for concern. This is not referring to how prestigious the internship is, especially if you have gone through several applicant rounds and rigorous amounts of hard work to be able to attain your position! This is specifically in reference to when compensation seems ridiculously too high or when the company caters all of their responses to you. The first internship I had applied for paid a living wage, between $30 to $40 an hour, with flexible schedules. This seemed like an insanely great opportunity especially since the job would entail essay editing for high schoolers. They continued to sweeten the deal, telling me that they were willing to open an internship position specifically for me because of how much they valued me as an applicant. Later on I found that the company was a recently built startup who were looking to have their applicants go through rounds of essay editing for free claiming that it was to demonstrate skills to ensure qualification. While this general rule certainly does not apply to everyone, if something seems way too good to be true, chances are it most likely is.
Another huge red flag to look out for when you are going through the interview process of internships is if they never mention compensation at all, even if the title description explicitly says you are going to get paid. In both of the internships that I was briefly involved with, all of their social media posts and posters that they had hung up placed a great emphasis on how much they pay per hour. However, throughout the interview process both organizations failed to mention anything related to compensation until I had brought it up. After bringing it up, if your internship manager tries to divert your attention towards something else, maybe revisit your LinkedIn page that night to look for other opportunities! You are an incredibly qualified candidate and you deserve to get paid for your work!
Lastly, make sure that the company or the organization that you are looking to work for is credible and established. This one is the clearest sign of whether the internship you are looking into is actually worth applying to! In the latest internship that I had applied for, the company was pretty recently established and something that clearly wasn’t a scam. However, it became clear that the organization was still assigning roles and the lack of structure provided only doubled the workload that lands on the interns. While this is definitely not the case for all internships, working for a stable, credible company often provides considerably more structure and skills that are transferable to your other career interests. These companies definitely don’t have to include name brands or insanely famous companies, but ones that are generally more reputable have more experience with interns working for them.
In retrospect, the two internships that I was briefly involved in truly didn’t seem exploitative or suspicious at the moment. With all that being said, the importance of college students being compensated for their time, efforts and dedication is still often not executed in practice. I definitely would not have recognized or quit these internships without the help of mentors and friends who made me deeply question the organization I was involved in. If this internship season is the first for you, as it is for me, I hope that my experience with these organizations provide clarity and help you avoid events that don’t serve your best interests!