What to Consider When Evaluating an Internship

I practically take offense at this sentence:

"While your internship doesn’t have to provide a salary or compensation, it’s certainly nice if it does."

First of all, it's not entirely clear if internships can legally have no compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you read the law, the employer must be providing significantly more value to the intern for this to be the case.

Second, it's not merely "certainly nice" if someone give you money to do work. Instead, payment for services rendered is a fundamental tenet of modern civilization!

I must quote the rest of this paragraph as well:

"Some internship programs, instead of providing money, give interns valuable experiences or professional development opportunities (such as paying for you to attend industry conferences or membership dues for an association), books, company products, etc."

Such "perks" are not gifts from an employer, but part of the normal course of nurturing and retaining *any* employee.

Certainly, unpaid internships are widespread, but many may be unlawful. I believe virtually all of them are unethical. When we receive significant value from bright, hardworking people without paying them, we are abusing the system for our personal gain.

This is the most fundamental question you have to ask yourself before taking an unpaid internship: does the potential benefit of having worked for a well-known organization outweigh the injustice of giving away valuable work. Here is the script for would-be interns: "I understand that this position has no salary. Therefore, I should expect to spend less than 50% of my time with you doing work that has value to the company, and more than 50% receiving value in the form of mentoring, professional development, training and other resources. Can you tell me more about how I will benefit?"

Robby Slaughter of IN 10:55AM May 10, 2011