Infamous Internships

By Hannah Thompson

They have been described as exploitation and even slavery. They are the unfortunate rites of passage that most semi-professionals have to endure in the hope of getting ‘that’ opportunity. They are, for most post graduates, the only option available to ensure they can get their feet firmly in the door.”

That’s it, we’re talking about infamous internships and the fact they’re renowned for being especially bad in the ‘creative’ industry, with journalistic jobs, PR and Advertising agencies topping the bill.

According to CIPR statistics 49% of PR interns do not receive the National Minimum wage and a large percentage feel they can’t take “low-paying or unpaid internships” simply because they can’t afford it. 

After graduating with a first class honours degree, Millie Hughes, 24, decided to go into the world of advertising and found herself on a paid internship program which paid a mere $12,000 a year. After admitting to not wanting to settle into a “dead end admin job” she set her sights high, however she said that she found herself accepting such a low salary, because “most of the other roles were un-paid.”

“I’m not sure how they got away that salary, but I guess at the time there were mostly unpaid ones around in London so it was actually the best I could find: I wanted a decent job in the creative industry.”

After interning for 6 months, the novelty of the paid internship had completely worn off and Millie became frustrated because she was doing “the same work as people with a thirty-grand salary.”

“Even though I proved myself, I felt that there was almost a ‘stigma’ attached to the idea of being an intern. I got all the ‘shitty’ jobs – you name them, I did them.”

Millie finally left her intern and landed herself a job with another agency which thankfully, meant she was receiving a salary that she deserved.  

It seems that even though there is obvious exploitation happening in the industry, employers are still using interns to save budget, which really, is wrong.

Josh James, owner of an advertising company on Old Street, Shoreditch, admits to hiring graduates to do un-paid internships to “keep costs down.”

“It’s been this way for a long time, I did an apprenticeship for a company twenty years ago and was on awful money but that is what this field of work is like,” he said, insinuating that you can’t put a price on good work experience.

“Graduates come here to learn, we offer something that prepares young professionals for the real world and to be honest you can’t really put a price on that.”

Millie says she felt slightly ‘tricked’ into taking an internship, the idea was sold to her as “you won’t be the office bitch, you’ll be thrown in at the deep end.”

“I wanted to do more than make the tea and do photocopying, but I didn’t think it was right that I was doing a lot of real work for a lot of big clients. I was given too much responsibility.” 

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