There has recently been a lot of talk both online and offline about the ethics surrounding unpaid internships and as somebody who has been a social media intern twice and was unfairly shoehorned into a third, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the matter.
Obviously when you're working within the creative industries it is really helpful if you have relevant work experience in your chosen field, but it's just not cool when companies use this knowledge to treat young people unreasonably. If you're considering taking on an internship then I'd advise you to think very carefully about whether you can afford to and not just financially, often you'll find that you're expected to spend a lot of your evenings and weekends working on particular things.
Living in London is already super strenuous when you haven't found your feet yet, luckily for me I had my parents to fall back on when times got tough but many people aren't so privileged. Unpaid internships are basically only feasible if you're from fairly well-off background which means that those who aren't often can't get the experience they need to fulfil their career goals which is extremely disheartening. Additionally you can't apply for Jobseekers Allowance or any government funding if you take on an internship, which is something that desperately needs to change.
A lot of people are under the assumption that becoming an intern will lead to a permanent position and this unfortunately is rarely the case. Often companies keep replacing interns just because it's an easy way to get the work done without actually paying anybody, which in my opinion is disgusting and lazy, especially when concerning social media. It makes little sense to have the least trained person in the office to have control over the social channels - when that is often the only thing that potential customers and collaborators see from certain businesses. One simple spelling mistake, link error or even content that's slightly off-tone can leave followers feeling confused.
My first internship was at a screen printing place called 3rd Rail, the second was at Vice and both were rewarding and gave me an insight into what it would be like to do social media work with both small and large companies. After these I tried to find a full-time paid job in my chosen discipline and noticed that entry level paid positions in social media practically didn't exist, yet internships were absolutely everywhere. It made me question what the point was in doing the experience in the first place if there was never going to be a job there afterwards, but then I received an email.
The email was from a fashion brand called The Whitepepper and they were writing to tell me that they'd received my email application and that I'd got myself an interview. In my initial email I specifically mentioned that I would not be able to support myself if the position was unpaid yet at the interview they requested that I'd undergo a one month trial and not even my expenses would be paid.
Over this month I took no days off, never fell behind on my work, would often do work that wasn't specific to the job specifications and even bought in a live rabbit for one of their photo-shoots. My friends barely ever saw me and my freelance creative work suffered because I was spending the majority of my time at the company and had spent all my money on travel to and from the office - some days I couldn't even afford food but I thought it'd all be worth it when the trial was over.
At the start of the second month I was called in for a meeting, my hopes were high as I knew I'd performed my best and delivered some quality ideas. They'd never given me any negative feedback previous to this meeting so I was certain that they would give me the paid role. In the meeting they gave me loads of positive feedback and enthused that I was capable of being their social media coordinator but asked if they could extend the unpaid internship another month. Then they started requesting that I'd take days off so that they could have other people in for trial days and that's when I knew that there was never a job for me in the first place and that I'd been deceived.
My younger sister, knowing that I didn't have a penny to my name, suggested that I'd see her friend about a job designing flyers for his club in central London. We organised an afternoon where I could go in for an interview and I even went into The Whitepepper office that morning to make sure I'd definitely got all the posts covered for that day and actually managed to do enough work to make sure all the social media was covered well into the next day. When I'd arrived home from the interview I had an email sitting in my inbox from Jade the managing director that read "we're very sorry to inform you that we will have to terminate your internship today as we don't see much reliability and commitment to work from you. You don't need to come in from tomorrow". Confused, I responded asking what it was that I'd done wrong and whether I could come in and collect my things - surely it couldn't have been because I'd taken the afternoon off to go to an interview when they'd kept me there for a month and a bit for nothing in return? She never responded and the next morning I snook in before work hours to grab a couple of my belongings back.
Looking back I wish I'd never let myself get strung along like that but I was so desperate for a job in fashion socials that I'd clung onto this last shred of hope. Hopefully talking about my this helped those who are thinking about taking on an internship but obviously these are just my opinions and experiences and it will be different for you.
I've been getting a lot of emails from companies expecting me to create content for them for free so I'd just like to make a note that I no longer take on unpaid work unless it benefits me in some way. Exposure is not a benefit, I can't buy a meal with exposure. If you'd like to offer me a paid opportunity, or you're a blogger who wants to collaborate, or you have something in mind that you think I'd be genuinely interested in, or even if you want to talk to me about this post - feel free to shoot me an email: hattirex@gmail.com
