The pros and cons of unpaid internships

Getting your first real job is a struggle for most students. You need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience. Many students remedy this vicious cycle by doing an internship.

An internship can give a student or recent graduate real-life work experience, foster connections in the field and teach them things they could not have learned in a classroom. Unfortunately many students were being taken advantage of by employers during these internships, causing a lot of distrust when it comes to landing an internship today.

One of the main issues revolving around internships is the fact that many of them are unpaid.

“Over the years the idea of the ‘unpaid internship’ was sometimes being abused. Companies were using large numbers of unpaid people and bringing them in over and over again instead of hiring people,” said Wendy Lycett, a career services consultant at Fanshawe.

Most of these abuses have been banned by federal or provincial laws. According to Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, unpaid internships are illegal unless they are part of a program approved by a post-secondary institution, provide training for certain professions or meet six conditions for an intern to be considered a “trainee”, all of which are available online. If an intern position does not meet these requirements then the employer must hire them as they would any other employee and pay the intern at least minimum wage.

Fanshawe has its own regulations when it comes to advertising unpaid internships. In order for an unpaid internship to be posted and made available to Fanshawe students, the organization posting the position must be a non-profit organization or a registered charity within Canada. Fanshawe specifies that the unpaid position should benefit the community and the individual, always be a matter of choice, be a way for individuals or groups to address human, environmental and social needs, not be a substitute for paid work, and not replace paid workers or threaten their job security.

Lycett said she has spoken to many students who believe they must do an internship in order to get a job, and while she herself did unpaid internships in her past and credits them for helping her get a start in her career, it’s not the best choice for all students.

Lycett said the Career Services office even gets calls from private individuals looking for a student to work for them in a variety of fields from setting up their computer to caregiving, and many expect the student to work for free.

“They can get quite irritated. They say, ‘They must need the experience’,” Lycett said. “There’s this idea that if someone’s a student they must be desperate for experience.”

Lycett said that college counts as work experience, since college is mostly hands-on learning with industry professionals.

Christopher Thorn, a second year Television Broadcasting student at Fanshawe, is considering doing an internship. After already working as a volunteer for Rogers TV London for three and a half years, Thorn said he is more than willing to accept an unpaid internship.

“Whether it be paid or an unpaid internship, I am getting on-the-job experience in a location that I normally would not get,” Thorn said. “On top of that, if the company likes what I’m capable of and has a position open, they could hire me aboard their team.”

Lycett said to be cautious before taking any internship but to take extra care if they are unpaid. “I don’t want to say that someone should never do an unpaid internship, because I think there probably are [good] cases, you just have to know how to protect yourself. Look at what the benefits are,” Lycett said.

Students who need help finding a job or an internship can visit the Career Services office at D1063.