Think Before You Intern

Posted on 26, Sep | Posted by cmjaffe

Think Before You Intern

September 24th, 2012 by Staff Writers

Pursuing an online education means that you probably hope to one day land a great job in your field of interest, but when entering the workforce, chances are you’ll be starting from the bottom and working your way up. A common way of working from the bottom up comes in the form of the internship. You probably know someone who’s interned, or perhaps you’ve been an intern yourself, and you know that sometimes internships seem like more trouble than they’re worth. While internships are widely held to be a valuable way to obtain experience in your field of interest, when pursuing an internship, it’s important to take into consideration the relative costs and benefits to your own professional well-being. Now, compared to as recently as a decade ago, more and more schools are requiring students to intern, and many companies won’t hire grads who haven’t completed an internship. But when students or post-grads are expected to intern without compensation, the experience can become noticeably less valuable. Studies show that students who intern without receiving pay in return tend to learn less, perform more menial tasks, and be hired on full-time at a lower rate than students who are paid for their internships. The following infographic takes a look at the perils of the unpaid internship, and why you should think before you accept one.

Please Include Attribution to OnlineCollegeCourses.com With This Graphic

Court slaps DOL on unpaid-intern rules

Posted on 5, May | Posted by cmjaffe

May 4, 2011 by Tim Gould -

(reposted from http://www.hrmorning.com)

About this time last year, the Department of Labor was making noise about cracking down on companies who used unpaid interns. Now a federal judge has ruled the DOL regs are “overly rigid and inconsistent.”

You’ll remember that the DOL issued a fact sheet outlining six scenarios under which it’s OK to use unpaid interns. Here’s the fed’s six-point test:

Is the training similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction?
Is the training for the benefit of the trainees or students?
Do the trainees or students work under their close observation of regular employees without displacing them?
Does the employer derive no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees or students, and on occasion are the employer’s operations actually impeded?
Are the trainees or students not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period?
Do the employer and the trainees or students understand that the trainees or students are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training?

The recent case involved private school students who worked part-time, unpaid, in a school-owned nursing home. The DOL sued the school, saying the students were providing actual services to the medical facility, and should be regarded as employees.

The feds pointed to the six-point test as the standard the court should use in deciding whether or not the students were employees.

The court declined. “We find the (DOL) test to be a poor method for determining employee status in a training or educational setting,” the judge wrote. “(I)t is overly rigid and inconsistent with a totality-of-the-circumstances approach.”

Finally, the court found that while the school did benefit from the students’ activities, the primary benefit of the program was the education received by the students. Thus, they were properly classified as unpaid interns.

Don’t let your guard down

Although the employer prevailed here, it’s still pretty clear that companies need to take a hard look at unpaid internship programs. Bottom line: If your company benefits from the work an intern does, the person’s got to be paid.

But it’s also reassuring to know that if an employer can make a case that the participants are reaping the lion’s share of the benefit of an internship program, judges aren’t going to automatically go along with a DOL lawsuit.

Cite: Solis v. Laurelbook Sanitarium and School, Inc. To read the full decision, go here.

Unpaid Interns, Complicit Colleges

Posted on 5, Apr | Posted by cmjaffe

Op-Ed Contributor
By ROSS PERLIN
April 2, 2011 – New York Times

ON college campuses, the annual race for summer internships, many of them unpaid, is well under way. But instead of steering students toward the best opportunities and encouraging them to value their work, many institutions of higher learning are complicit in helping companies skirt a nebulous area of labor law.

Colleges and universities have become cheerleaders and enablers of the unpaid internship boom, failing to inform young people of their rights or protect them from the miserly calculus of employers. In hundreds of interviews with interns over the past three years, I found dejected students resigned to working unpaid for summers, semesters and even entire academic years — and, increasingly, to paying for the privilege.

For the students, the problems are less philosophical and legal than practical. In 2007, for instance, Will Batson, a Colgate University student from Augusta, Ga., and a son of two public-interest lawyers, worked as an unpaid, full-time summer intern for WNBC and had to scramble for shelter in New York City.

“It definitely hurt my confidence,” Mr. Batson told me. He recalled crashing on more than 20 floors and couches, being constantly short on cash and fearing he would have to quit and go home. His father, he said, felt like a failure for not being able to help him rent an apartment.

What makes WNBC — whose parent company, General Electric, is valued at more than $200 billion — think it can get away with this? In Mr. Batson’s case, a letter from Colgate, certifying that he was receiving credit for doing the internship. (Now 24, he gave up on journalism and is at a technology start-up. NBC calls its internship program “an important recruiting tool.”)

Federal Internship Programs Revamp

Posted on 19, Jan | Posted by cmjaffe

The White House executive order to cut the Federal Career Intern Program, a popular and controversial hiring authority slated to end March 1, is a welcome sign.

The executive order issued December 27th, 2010 entitled “Recruiting and Hiring Students and Recent Graduates” calls to establish a comprehensive structure to help the Federal Government be more competitive in recruiting and hiring talented individuals who are in school or who have graduated. The order directs OPM to consolidate student and recent graduate programs into the Pathways Programs framework with three clear program paths that are tailored to recruit, train and retain well-qualified candidates:

Internship Program. A new Internship Program will be created that is targeted towards students enrolled in a wide variety of educational institutions.
Recent Graduates Program. This brand new program will target recent graduates of trade and vocational schools, community colleges, universities, and other qualifying institutions. To be eligible, applicants must apply within two years of degree completion (except for veterans precluded from doing so due to their military service obligation, who will have six years after degree completion). Successful applicants will be placed in a two-year career development program with a cohort of peers hired during timeframes aligned with academic calendars. After successfully completing the program, participants will be considered for noncompetitive conversion to career jobs.
Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) Program. The PMF Program has been the Federal government’s premier leadership development program for advance degree candidates for more than three decadesThe Executive Order expands the eligibility window for applicants, making it more “student friendly” by aligning it with academic calendars and including those who have received a qualifying advanced degree within the preceding two years. It also directs OPM to set qualification standards, and to make changes in order to make the PMF experience more robust and substantive for participants.

The three Pathways Programs will each provide noncompetitive conversion eligibility to participants and will be used in targeted ways to develop talent for civil service careers. The order also requires agencies to designate a Pathways Programs Officer (at the agency level, or at bureaus or components within the agency) within 45 days, or by February 10, 2011. The Pathways Programs Officer will be in charge of administering Pathways Programs, serving as a liaison with OPM, and reporting to OPM on the implementation of the Pathways Programs and the individuals hired under them.

The Student Career Experience Program, another intern-hiring program, will be replaced with a new program simply called the Internship Program.

This action by the White House and OPM is welcome for a variety of reasons:

Its no secret that the Fed’s hiring process is complicated and obtuse. Internships and internship programs vary widely from one agency to the next. Having a more clear structure and point of contact will be one step closer to a clearer pathway to a federal career. As stated in the order:”To compete effectively for students and recent graduates, the federal government must improve its recruiting efforts; offer clear paths to federal internships for students from high school through post-graduate school; offer clear paths to civil service careers for recent graduates; and provide meaningful training, mentoring and career-development opportunities,” Obama wrote. “Further, exposing students and recent graduates to federal jobs through internships and similar programs attracts them to careers in the federal government and enables agency employers to evaluate them on the job to determine whether they are likely to have successful careers in government.”
It shines a light once again on internship practices in dire need of review of what works, what doesn’t and how we can better protect interns and the integrity of the internship experience. (It was almost a year ago that the debate around unpaid internships heated up.)
It presents the opportunity to once again endorse internships as a powerful and effective strategy for individuals to determine the right carer fit and organizations to recruit top talent.

My only hope is that the Pathways Program and Program Officers will take the time to remember that it’s the quality of the experience that matters most.

Intern as Hero

Posted on 13, Jan | Posted by cmjaffe

A common notion about interns is that they fulfill duties like filing, running errands, updating databases and research. Not save a life.

Daniel Hernandez, the intern to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords whose quick thinking helped save her life, had only been on the job a short time. He came to the internship after having volunteered with her campaign previously and with skills in emergency response. Obviously he was not hired for these skills nor did he know they would prove so valuable. Neither would anyone else. Daniel Hernandez is a hero. His actions were heroic. And the situation was extreme.

Yet, the message underlying is everyday — to never underestimate those around us. Whether they are interns, entry level employees, a homeless person, a volunteer or someone parked behind you, each of these individuals has something to offer. I am proud of Daniel Henandez and what he did. I am even more proud of what his actions remind us.

View an interview with Intern Daniel Hernadez

New Beginnings

Posted on 5, Dec | Posted by admin

1-11-11

Today we launch not merely the new website for TII, but a new beginning. And what better day than this one! New beginnings. This means to me a fresh start, a look forward at what can be without losing all that has served us in getting here.

First, I want to thank those of you who have helped move The Internship Institute forward, especially its founder, Matthew Zinman, whose passion for internships is unmatched. Matthew has worked tirelessly over the last decade to make the internship experience one of quality and integrity, and to develop solutions that work. With the Institute in Washington, DC, Matthew can now realize his vision that the organization become a voice for internship best practices nationwide.

Second, I am thrilled to be working in internships in a time when the practice is front and center in conversations around providing more skilled workers, generating jobs and closing gaps between learning and work. For many years I have believed in and worked toward a world where experiential learning is more valued, well executed and gives our young people a much clearer sense of how they best fit into the world of work. No, I believe, the time has come to take definitive steps in big enough ways that they get noticed. Who knows? One day you might just find an Office of Internships at the Department of Labor.

Finally, I look forward to connecting to all of you out there who share a similar passion for internships, who are running great programs and who want to join me in moving our mission forward. I am looking for help and support. Don’t be shy.

To New Beginnings! –

Cindy Morgan-Jaffe, Executive Director

Search

Blog