Internships - Paid or Unpaid ?

The percentage of students doing internships while they study has increased significantly and the internships during school are pretty much the norm these days. Students start searching for internships as soon as they land in school and the schools start helping them right from the day one. From my experience, I have found searching for an internship is as much if not more difficult than searching for a full-time job. Internships have become more important for carrier-switchers, a big chunk of which might be in MBA, I assume. These jobs become a means of getting your foot in the door, bridging that gap in your experience and to prove to your prospective employer, that you are committed towards that new career path.

In the current economic scenario, where jobs and internships are hard to come by, unpaid internships are not unheard of. Many people, and in many cases schools too, advise students to go for an unpaid internship to get that experience that they need to apply for their next job. I was not aware until I read this article in NYT, that unpaid internships may be actually illegal in some cases. So, I asked myself, "Why do people still go for unpaid internships, if it is illegal?"  I started thinking of what's in it for students, companies and let's not forget schools.

Students benefit the most from internships. For someone who has never worked in a function or an industry, it's hard to prove to the employer one's credibility when there are many other candidates with years of experience applying for the same job. Internships come as a handy tool to break this vicious catch-22 circle. Students generally benefit more from the internships than the companies do. Apart from getting paid,they also get an opportunity to

• gain experience in relevant area
• network with people in the company
• know the work culture at the company and see if it's a good fit
• rethink their decision to get into that profession
• prove themselves to be a great full-time candidate at the same company

Companies share some of the interests with the students. It gives them an opportunity to see if the intern is a good fit with the company culture. That was the only reason I was aware of before I started my MBA. I saw companies posting part-time jobs as interns, where they clearly wanted some student to work for them for cheap. I also saw a lot of internships listed as unpaid. The unpaid internships from non-profits made atleast some sense, but the idea of working for a for-profit company for free just baffled me. Some of the jobs that I saw were just part-time jobs, that companies wanted to get done by students for free.

There is a always a good chance that a student interning at a company might get a full time offer from the same company. So, the schools would definitely want students to get internships that they can convert to job offers. Placement numbers every year play a very important role in the school rankings. Besides, which school would want their students not to have a good job after school? And, internships always help students in their full time job hunts. So, schools sometimes advise students to take internships in their fields of interest even if they are unpaid, especially if they think the internship experience can later help them in getting a job. I felt sometimes that schools should not let for-profit companies list unpaid internship postings on the job board. But then thinking about the kind of economic mess we are in, a lot of people are ready to take those short stints only hoping it will help them a year later.