This morning’s Editorial Intelligence breakfast was busy. Very busy. The topic up for debate? Intern nation. It’s a subject, it seems, that is at the forefront of the nation’s mind and one that, having spent a long time interning, I was particularly interested in.
The panel was a brilliant mix – Simon Waugh, executive chairman of the National Apprenticeship Service; Gemma Lines, head of graduates at Citibank; Martin Bright, former journalist and founder of New Deal of the Mind; journalist, author and activist Laurie Penny; and Faye Wenman from the Taylor Bennett Foundation. The debate was chaired by the Financial Times’ Brain Groom.
He started with an alarming statistic – youth unemployment is approaching one million. So what, he asked, are the issues that need to be tackled?
A predominant theme was, unsurprisingly, class. As someone who was able to fund herself through a string of internships, Penny has written extensively on the topic. ‘The intern system is a mess,’ she said. She has watched many of her talented Oxford University friends who cannot afford to work for free struggle to find employment. She pointed out that although the privilege barrier is being knocked down at university entry level, it is still there after graduation. Those privileged enough to be able to afford internships get the jobs.
Bright, too, believed that class is an issue, particularly in political journalism, where there is a narrow talent pool. ‘If a Premier League football club recruited only middle-class white boys, they would be rubbish,’ he said. ‘So we need to throw the net wider.’ Wenman agreed, her main concern being the under-representation of ethnic minorities, particularly in communications jobs.
This isn’t the case in all professions. Lines offered an insight into the application process for internships in Citibank, one of the largest banks in the world, where they received 50,000 applicants for 450 jobs and actively seek recruits from outside the UK. The application process is long and grueling: covering letters and CVs, online tests, assessment days, group sessions, one-on-one interviews. ‘When you’re presented with such a large pool of very talented people, the smallest things make a difference,’ she said. ‘How someone dresses, their small-talk skills, how they shake hands – soft skills.’
‘Skills don’t have the same kudos as a degree’ said Waugh. ‘That needs to be changed.’ He believed disproportionate amounts of young people are being pushed down the higher education route. ‘We need to identify which careers actually benefit from the HE route,’ he said.
So are internships exploitation? Bright said he’s not against them, as long as it is a fair exchange, but this is rarely the case nowadays. If interns are working, they should be paid the minimum wage. If it’s simply work experience they are doing, they should have the benefit of contacts and genuine experience. As it stands, the exploited ones are the lucky ones, and that needs to change.
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