Internships: Employability Boost or Exploitation?

The university summer holidays are now well under way and an increasing number of students are dedicating a big part of their summer break (or its totality) to undertaking an internship, as encouraged by universities and pressured into doing so to differentiate oneself from the hordes of students when the time comes to finally find a job and build a career. Gaining work experience is now considered a necessity on top of a student’s degree. The latter is in fact no longer sufficient in the eyes of both employers and (future) employees with regards to employability – at the very least the lack of work experience of a recent graduate reduces the job opportunities available to him/her.

However, internships are competitive, scarce for the crowds of university students, poorly publicised, with word-of-mouth prevailing as the main mean of advertising, and often monopolised by recent graduates who have been unable to find a long-term job and have no other option but to resort to back-to-back internships and short-term contracts. This worrying situation of précarité (precariousness) as the French media has labelled it is becoming the norm for many graduates and young professionals across Europe. Companies, especially big multinational firms, have increased their requirements for jobs to the point that most jobs require several years work experience in the field, even for the most basic administrative jobs. In France, a standard receptionist job can ask for a significant amount of experience in a similar position even though the advertised position is for a duration of three weeks. This explains both why young professionals in their late 20s, early 30s, are still undertaking internships whilst students still at university struggle to find relevant work experience.

But why does a degree no longer suffice on the job market? The answer is simple.  The increasing rivalry between companies in their effort to be more competitive has gone hand in hand with the demise of the long-term job and the rise of the precarious job market. The flexibility of the labour force and of labour laws have been a successful strategy for firms wishing to better adapt to demand.  However, it has also resulted in expanding the precarious job market to a class of workers who are overqualified for such a market and all the while putting it out of reach for a many of those who would benefit the most from it: students. The consequence of this is that internships are no longer a platform designed to propel one’s employability but one that that ferments exploitation. Internships that are underpaid or unpaid are a form of exploitation of the labour market especially when interns are overqualified for the job. They are a form of exploitation when there is no possibility of promotion and professional ascension. And they are a form of exploitation when they do not help promote the interns’ employability forcing them to accumulate a series of endless internships to make livings end.

The exploitation does not stop there however. Increasingly, unpaid internships in general are being scrutinised by the general public. With internships up to a year’s time not offering pay, how can one claim that internships are not exploiting the youngest of the labour force? Although interns are now starting to take their employers to court over unpaid hours of work (and some have won their court cases), the unpaid internship continues to prevail partly due to the near desperation of some students and recent graduates to stock up on work experience in the hope that this will one day suffice and allow them to find something more long-term. But unpaid and poorly paid internships will keep on being the norm (an increasing norm I might add) so long as laws are not tightened with regards to them. The French Socialist government has recently announced a rise in the monthly wage of an intern from 436€ to 523€. This income pales in the face of the French monthly minimum wage, a staggering 1,430€ a month for 35 hours a week, one of the highest minimum wages in Europe. The result is that, for obvious reasons, companies in France favour the convention de stage (work placement agreement), which enables them to fill positions all the while paying those who fill them less than half of what they would have to pay them if they employed them under a short-term or long-term contract. Another point worth noting is that whilst it is illegal in France to not pay interns undertaking an internship of more than 2 months, for a period of under 2 months internships may go unpaid. As a result it is not uncommon during the summer especially to see employers hiring interns for a period of 1 month and 3 weeks.

The convention de stage, seen as a kindness made to students to enable them to find work experience by effectively encouraging companies to exploit their vulnerable situation, is harder to get than it looks. French students studying full-time abroad and wishing to come back to France to do an internship are asked to provide employers with the famous convention de stage, something that UK institutions for example rarely provide. Yet French students studying in France are also struggling to get their home institutions to sign this much needed paper.  The reasons behind this are that either the duration of the internship in question is considered too long. Another more worrying reason is that a convention can only be delivered within an academic context meaning that graduates are unable to secure one from their university.  Consequently, France is of late experiencing a rise in the business of these conventions. Private companies now offer recent graduates convention for a price, a price these young graduates who are unable to secure a job and only have internships offered to them, are willing to pay.

The concept of the internship and work placement needs to be revised to provide adequately what they originally promised: valuable work experience to build onto students' academic savoir faire enabling them to later on ascend in their field or secure a firm position. Students and young graduates have an amazing potential to innovate, introduce new ideas and concepts that can only benefit national economies. We should be helping them reach that potential and not encourage their exploitation.