The poor economy may actually benefit Alex Goldschmidt’s internship experience, the Boston University College of Communication junior said.
Goldschmidt, an unpaid intern at Boston public relations agency Schneider Associates, said the firm’s financial cuts have partially redistributed the workload down to the interns, allowing him to earn solid work experience as well as college credit.
‘Since I’ve started my internship, there’s been a lot of talk around the office about more work having to be put on other people because of firings and budget cuts,’ Goldschmidt said. ‘They’re relying a lot more on interns just for stuff that may have been done by a paid executive before that they now can’t afford to hire.’
‘I’m not doing busy work,’ Goldschmidt said.
Despite numerous corporate layoffs and widespread economic uncertainty, the total number of available internship opportunities, as well as student demand for internship opportunities have increased, BU administrators said.
‘I’ve noticed an increase this year in terms of opportunities during the school year because [businesses] want to use a less expensive way to get the work done,’ School of Management Feld Career Center Assistant Dean Catherine Ahlgren said.
Businesses are looking to take on more interns ‘because they can get their project work done without committing to a full hire,’ she said.
The volume of students looking for internships has skyrocketed in recent months, COM Career Services Director Joyce Greenwood Rogers said. With companies losing full-time employees and more students demanding work opportunities, internships are ‘just a way to fill a need for both the company and the student,’ she said.
Economic turbulence may only be a secondary reason behind the increase in student demand for internships, Greenwood Rogers said.
‘I think students feel the pressure from parents and roommates and peers to get on top of their game in this economic climate,’ Greenwood Rogers said. ‘If you don’t do it early, if you don’t prepare yourself properly, you might not get one.’
Schneider Associates Integrated Marketing Communications Director Patrick Richardson said the economy has not affected the agency’s internship program either.
‘ ‘Our internships are essential to our company,’ Richardson said. ‘We get to find a lot of young talent that tends to come back and work for us.”
The poor economy should not serve as an excuse for businesses to take advantage of students and hire too many unpaid interns, InternshipRatings.com co-founder Stephanie Gurtman said in an e-mail.
‘Interns are always valuable assets because they have a strong work ethic, are enthusiastic and are eager to learn,’ Gurtman, a COM junior, said. ‘It is important not to take too many [unpaid internships], in order to make sure that the ones taken have as many opportunities as possible at the company and get focused attention and training.’
The motive behind participating in a student internship should be to gain work experience, not earn money, School of Hospitality Administration sophomore Victoria Bean said. A poor economy should not have any effect on student internships then, Bean, an unpaid intern at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, said.
‘There are plenty of options out there right now,’ Bean said. ‘With the economy, you just have to be willing to take them unpaid, and you won’t have trouble.’
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
