OzHR #13 - Internships

Another one bites the dust as Conde Nast shuts down its internship program. As a previous Conde Nast intern says "I cried myself to sleep", and as lots of twitterers say in reply "toughen up princess". It's slave labour, it's invaluable experience, it's the new job economy, it's an exploitation - can we make our minds up?!

I got into an internship with a magazine in Singapore when I was still a uni student, and then they told me I wouldn't get paid. So I said "thanks, but no thanks". I only mildly regret that decision, because here I am writing because I love writing, and to have spent time in a magazine would have been invaluable. Instead I worked and got paid as an English-speaking playmate for 2 small Mandarin-speaking children. It was an awesome job.

Anyway, now I'm a little unsure about internships. In some ways they seem like a necessity for a career, and in other ways, they seem like an exploitation of cheap (free) labour. What do you think?

The chat will be Thursday 28 November starting at 7pm AEDT. Now we're in daylight savings time, find your city (or corresponding time zone) below, for the starting time:

7pm - Sydney, Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne (AEDT)
6:30pm - Adelaide (ACDT)
6:00pm - Brisbane (AEST)
5:30pm - Darwin (ACST)
4:00pm - Perth (AWST)

Just make sure to pop a #OzHR in your tweet so we can see it, and be sure to invite others along for the ride!

The questions are:

1) What's the best way to run a mutually beneficial internship? Is it better to just admit it's an unfeasible program?

2) The nature of work is changing - do internships help or hinder positive changes in the work world?

3) If companies don't provide internships, should they use internship experience as a way to differentiate job candidates?

4) What's more valuable - an unpaid internship in the relevant industry, or an entry level job in any industry?