Ask An Intern: What’s the Deal with Unpaid Internships?

When you think of an unpaid internship, the tasks that probably come to mind involve making coffee, going on lunch runs, and other unsophisticated errands. For exactly those reasons, It may be easy to question the value of unpaid internships. So, what do you even get out of an unpaid internship? As a college student approaching the end of an unpaid internship at Emotive Brand, I can tell you that there is a lot more to these internships than meets the eye, and I believe that everyone can benefit from them.

Throughout my life I’ve been asked the infamous question, “So, what do you want to do when you grow up?” Some college students, and even some high school students, have a precise answer to this question, and that’s wonderful. I am not one of those college students. As a rising sophomore, I haven’t even decided what I want to major in, let alone what I want to do with my life. For this reason, any exposure to a career I am remotely interested in is huge, and that is precisely what an internship is: exposure. The only way to understand if something is right for you is to try it.

It is necessary to acknowledge that unpaid internships do not have a place in everyone’s life. Unpaid internships can require major time commitments, and there is no financial compensation for that time commitment. Some people simply cannot sacrifice the time or money. Lots of college students who don’t have enough financial support find themselves working late shifts at restaurants or grocery stores in order to get by during an unpaid internship. Additionally, the actual process of finding a good internship isn’t always a piece of cake. While there are resources out there to help, having a personal connection somewhere can be a tremendous advantage.

If you have the ability to get past these challenges and participate in an internship, then you absolutely should. Here are three reasons why.

1. Exposure: Like I mentioned earlier, you can never really know if something is a good fit until you try it. Internships are a fantastic way of testing the waters of new environments; there is really no substitute for seeing for yourself what a certain career is like. While absolutely anyone can benefit from exposure to different careers, this is a particularly important aspect of an internship for someone like me, someone who hasn’t quite figured out what career path is right for them. Getting a good sense of what you don’t want in a career is just as important as knowing what you do want in a career, meaning that any internship is valuable, whether or not you see yourself there in the future. In most internships, you will get opportunities to work on projects, and those opportunities can teach you a lot. Working on these projects can help you better understand your skills and your growth edges, which is very helpful information when considering what career path to choose.
2. Networking: When you’re a college student, most of your networking connections probably come from parents or professors. I don’t want to trivialize these connections, because they are incredibly important, but it’s also important to make your own networking connections as time goes on. Internships are excellent opportunities to start building your own network. Internships give you the opportunity to ask those burning questions and get a lot of different perspectives. And you might even receive some really valuable career advice from people who have already gone through what you’re currently going through.
3. Experience: The way I see it, there are two types of experience that you get from an unpaid internship: the kind of experience you can put on a resumé, and the kind of experience you can apply to the rest of your life. The first kind of experience is pretty simple: internships are great to put on your resumé to show future employers that you’re familiar with the workplace and have certain skills. Beyond that, unpaid internships are a great way to learn how to work with other people, be flexible, and compromise. Yes, the lunch runs, grocery shopping, and coffee brewing actually benefit you, too. I know it may be hard to believe, but all those errands serve as important life experience in the form of organizational skills and people skills, which are excellent skills to have in any profession.

I accept the fact that unpaid internships probably seem inherently unappealing to most. The word “unpaid” certainly does a lot to discourage potential interns. However, it’s easy to get past the lack of financial compensation for your time and effort when you realize how many other ways an internship compensates you in ways that money cannot.