Imagine you’re sitting behind a desk at a million-dollar company. You’re hiring a new worker—someone to revitalize and innovate your workforce, a new and positive face for the company. In come dozens of qualified people. Any one of them would be an excellent fit; they present well, have all the skills you require and more, and are personable and tech-savvy. You feel they would be an asset to your company.
Would you suggest they work for free?
The challenge facing many students this summer is how to balance their financial interests with a need for experience. The ones that land paid internships are a select few, but why?
Josh Mandryk, executive director of the Canadian Intern Association (CIA), said internships offer primary exposure to the job market for students and new grads.
“If you are looking at some people who are doing these internships in summers between school terms, this is some of the first exposure they will get to the labour market,” he said. The best positions, he said, offer a competitive wage as well as mentorship and experience.
Mandryk said the conventional idea that students need unpaid work experience to impress future employers is, according to some studies, largely untrue.
“Employers don’t weigh unpaid internships the same way they do paid positions,” he said. “It makes sense, because what they’re saying is, this last employer didn’t think you were worth getting paid, so I might think the same, and that’s a big part of it.”
For this reason, he said, payment is crucial to both students and employers.
Mandy Kovacs, a recent Carleton University journalism graduate, took a partially paid internship at
International News Services before she got hired to a full-time job. She said she was thankful for the opportunity for some paid work before she started her job.
“I started in March . . . and I didn’t get paid hourly, but I got paid whenever I did an article, or edits on a piece, I would get commissions,” she explained.
Kovacs said that for her, the internship transitioned into a full-time job, where she is now paid hourly in addition to commissions.
“It was great to have that training and get familiar with the work I would be doing with the clients I’m writing for,” she said.
Kovacs said in her opinion, internships should always be paid because students provide valuable service to any company.
“When you’re doing the same sort of work that any other worker or writer would be doing, it doesn’t make sense not to pay people,” Kovacs said.
Payment for services rendered is a matter of respect, Mandryk said, and this is why a wage is invaluable. The experience is good, but it’s often not financially possible to forgo a pay cheque.
“It has a damaging effect on young people, the message being that they’re not worth payment,” he said.
“Sometimes an unpaid internship will offer a foot in the door, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be paid for that work as well,” Mandryk said. “All of those other benefits would have been accrued to them, if they were paid in that position.”
