I think a misunderstanding has just cost me potentially 5 different roles. You may remember a week or so ago that I posted about the never ending internships, my hope that as they were designed for people just like me I would get one and the desire to hear back.
I heard back. The rejections began to start arriving. One company provided feedback and thus started the cascade. After exchanging emails several times with GJS I recieved detailed feedback on my covering letter and then it dawned on me and suddenly it made sense why I was being rejected and why another department in the same company had picked up my C.V and offered me an interview. It was down to the purpose of the covering letter. The following was the description on the GJS site:
If you are interested in finding out more about this exciting opportunity please register with the GJS website, or simply log in and attach your CV with along with a covering letter explaining how you think you will benefit from this experience.
I clearly read too much into this. Misread the intention and tailored my covering letter to convince someone at GJS I needed this internship and would struggle without it.
In actuality I was not meant to do this. I was meant to write your standard covering letter explaining why you are good for the company and the role. This meant I had intentionally undersold myself, played down what I had done up to now and painted myself as an individual in desperate need of some experience.
It may surprise you to know this is not what most companies are after. I wrote for the wrong target audience and for the totally wrong purpose and although I have learned of my mistake and can ensure I do not make it in future, I cannot help but feel for the outstanding applications it's just a case of waiting for the rejections to roll in.
OK so times are tough but how do you feel about the fact that many internships are illegal (unpaid) and yet companies are using them to effectively get free labour..
ReplyDeleteIn that yes you need your first big break, BUT, you realise that the more people do unpaid internships then the less work there is actually out there. Therefore it is like the self-consuming snake.
In that if people who just graduated are willing to work free internships then why would companies not just keep rolling internships and therefore NEVER fill the role in question with a full time employee?. In my accountancy days companies did just that and they had 2 perm staff the other 20 employees were all interns.
Hence in taking those internships you are in effect perpetuating the exploitation.
In that I've taken a hard line, although HRMC pisses me off and is a virtual enemy of mine due to my prior working with them. I have in effect started to report with good reason companies that hire unpaid interns precisely for the reasons I have stated above. This might seem like grassing them up but what other choice and method do we have to prevent exploitation that is what many internships are?
Don't get me wrong proper internships where you learn something get a qualification etc I have nothing against but when they select a full time post and stick intern in front of the job description this takes the piss.
In that think about it deeper when you get your big break, what stops the company from killing off your job by hiring (or rather exploiting) and intern instead?.
We seriously don't want to go down the American route where internships are NORMAL, and interns end up paying companies to take them on which seems totally twisted to me.
This is starting to occur in the UK, where they have reverse auctions the last one I saw some poor kid had to pay £14K for a 6 month internship. There is just so much wrong with that.
I managed a first strike, Dokana which advertises for interns all the time has heeded my warnings about unpaid interns and the number of intern positions has decreased markedly there used to be 30+ a week unpaid internships. Some of them have changed them to apprenticeships, some of them have changed them to NMW. My actions, and most importantly YOUR actions and those of your peers (consider those who have no savings and therefore can't afford to work for free) are the battle lines. If people don't report and keep accepting these shitty slave labour dressed up internships (that are really just full time jobs) you are destroying your own futures.
Regards
Some good points there. I certainly would have to agree with you that there are issues with unpaid internships and I am very wary of them. I certainly think it is wrong for graduates to actually pay for them and we do not want to go down the American route.
ReplyDeleteAll the internships I have looked at are paid positions. I already have a non paying position which is in my volunteering work, one of the few sectors that can legitimately offer no pay.
In hard times there are always people looking to profit from the misfortune of others whether it is by offering interships or duping people into cold calling jobs. I understand I am more fortunate than most to have the security of savings so it is certainly easier for me.
Good to know there are people not afraid to point out exploitation of graduates.