When Joseph D'Souza left Portsmouth University last year
with a 2:1 in Business Economics, he struggled to find a job. After several
months of applying with no luck, his father suggested he try interning. Mr
D'Souza signed up to job sites including Reed and TotalJobs and was soon
contacted by an agency called Inspiring Interns.
A visit to their offices to record a video CV and take
various tests soon led to three interviews. Before long, Mr D'Souza, 24, was on
a three-month placement at Fetch Media, a mobile marketing agency based in
London, which ended with him being taken on full time.
"I'm so thankful to Inspiring Interns," said Mr
D'Souza. "I'd probably still be looking for a job if it weren't for
them." Mr D'Souza is not alone. A few years ago, internships, once known
as plain old work-experience placements, were undertaken by students during
summer holidays to gain a taster of potential careers. Now, with youth
unemployment rife, for many graduates they have become an essential first rung
on the ladder.
It's a shift that has not gone unnoticed among a new wave of
recruitment firms. But some have stoked controversy by charging companies for
finding the best workies, or even charging the keen-as-mustard graduate for the
privilege of slotting them into an unpaid place.
Inspiring Interns, based in central London and founded in
2009, is a leading player in the new "internship industry". Rivals
include Instant Impact and Intern Avenue, which launched this summer and
recently secured £100,000 of Dragons' Den funding from Peter Jones. All focus
on creating internships at small and medium-sized businesses that otherwise
wouldn't offer these opportunities.
"Recruitment businesses are evolving", says Ben
Rosen, Inspiring's founder. "In essence, we're a graduate recruitment
company, but the three-month internships we offer enable the graduate to
experience the role within the company and work out whether they like it or
not, and on the other side of the coin, whether it's right for the employer."
Companies like Inspiring Interns and Instant Impact, founded
in 2011 by two Cambridge graduates, focus on recruiting high-calibre graduates
making them attractive to SMEs who otherwise wouldn't have the resources to
reach them. Both firms say they invest significant time and effort screening
candidates to make sure companies get not only the best but also the right
people. Inspiring, which places 20 people a week, makes applicants take
personality and metric tests.
"One of the biggest drains on time is finding good
employees and it's no different for interns," says John Auckland, director
of Thread Marketing Group, who took an intern from Instant Impact. "The
fact that something like Instant Impact exists fills a massive hole."
The job prospects of graduates who go through the
"intern industry" are good, perhaps unsurprising given that
recruiters focus on sourcing top talent. Inspiring boasts that 66 per cent of
the 2,000 interns they've placed have been offered a full-time job at the
company they worked in, with a starting salary that's on average £1,500 higher
than those who have gone straight into a graduate role. But while the majority
benefit from the system, some in this new industry have been accused of
exploitation. One firm set up last year, Etsio, tried to get potential interns
to pay up to £150 a day to gain the appropriate experience and insight.
"If you or your parents aren't interested in paying a
couple of hundred quid actually getting some real world experience then I don't
think you're very serious," said Kit Sadgrove, Etsio's founder.
The
company closed two months ago after failing to attract "enough people
prepared to invest in their future", he added. Inspiring Interns has also
drawn criticism. Campaign group Intern Aware, founded in 2010 by graduate Gus
Baker, believe Inspiring takes advantage of interns by charging the company who
they're placed with while the intern is unpaid.
"To give [Inspiring Interns] credit, they are good at
making money," says Mr Baker. "They make a killing." Instant
Impact and Intern Avenue insist businesses pay their interns but Inspiring
Interns, the biggest recruiter in the field, only requires that interns are
paid travel and food expenses, while they charge companies a £500-a-month
finder's fee.
"Our fee comes from finding the right person for the
company," says Andrew Scherer, Inspiring's marketing director. "What
we're doing is creating learning opportunities."
Inspiring says it is giving graduates the chance to gain
valuable skills and experience and the chance of an entry-level job that
otherwise wouldn't exist. Mr Scherer says they work closely with companies to
ensure that they don't violate minimum-wage law. However, in practice it seems
little is done to enforce it.
"Looking back at what I was doing, I wish I was
paid," said Meera Badal, a recent graduate who did an internship through
Inspiring. "I won business for the company. That was a sore point for me.
I was never reimbursed. If it were just a learning experience I would have been
there for one or two weeks, just observing. I was getting involved, adding
value to the bottom line. In my terms, I was an employee." From an
employer's perspective, it makes sense to give work to interns. Mr Auckland
added: "Our agency isn't huge, we expect [interns] to be able to come in
and pick up quite a high level of responsibility from day one."
Mr Scherer admits that in some cases employers take
advantage of interns, but he insists Inspiring does all it can to avoid this.
"We're an intermediary, we do our best to make companies
understand their responsibilities but ultimately it's between them and the
intern."
Intern Aware disagrees. Mr Baker says: "They're clearly
not doing enough. If you look at their website, it looks like they're actively
encouraging people to not pay their interns and therefore break minimum-wage
law."
Part of the problem is the term "intern". Unlike
work experience, "intern" has no legal status in the UK.
Mr Baker's group helps former interns take action against
employers who didn't pay. IPC Media, a south London auction house and an
international media conglomerate, together paid out more than £2,250 last month
to two interns who challenged their employers in the courts with the help of
Intern Aware.
"More and more employers are starting to pay interns,"
says Mr Baker.
However, despite its critics, in the current economic
climate and with young graduates desperate not to be left on the shelf, growth
in the intern industry shows few signs of abating.
Source: 3 November 2012, The Independent by Oscar Williams-Grut
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