Question

Many business students are familiar with the pressure to get internships or part-time jobs in their career field while in school. The surest route to the career track for many is to take on these limited-duration work assignments. Internships do give employers an easy way to size up potential applicants in a setting identical to the one in which they would perform. And unlike employees, interns are easily terminated if they don’t pan out. It’s the same situation for part-time or summer workers, who are sometimes let go at a moment’s notice.

Internships are such a powerful tool for finding jobs that some students have begun to take on low-paid or even unpaid work assignments. While such “early bird” internships used to be primarily associated with large organizations, many startups have begun to attract students. For example, Remy Agamy took an internship at a three-person design company, knowing that it wasn’t likely to turn into a job. Still, in the job market she found that other prospective employers were keen on learning what she’d done in this internship. “I think we talked more about my eight-week internship than my four years of consulting experience,” she said.

The value of internships for students, however, has long been questioned. While there may be a promise of a chance to learn, many students complain of doing little more than acting as unpaid, unskilled labor. Christina Isnardi is one student who felt exploited by the system. She described working 16- or 17-hour days at Lions Gate Entertainment, doing work like taking breakfast orders or working in locations far from the actual film set. “We just feel as though our dreams are holding us hostage to this unfair, unethical labor practice.” Isnardi’s experiences are not uncommon. Interns working for organizations as diverse as MTV, Warner Music Group, and Madison Square Garden describe similar experiences, which is why all these organizations have all faced lawsuits from former interns.

In what might seem like a dream job, other students have negotiated great-sounding internships at organizations that regularly hire interns and pay them, but then don’t know what to do with these temporary employees. One student we know of was encouraged to make the best use of his time during his summer internship in a major city, including taking a paying job elsewhere and just staying in touch by phone when work hours overlapped! Because of his ingenuity, he reported it was a very productive summer, but the internship didn’t provide the learning opportunity he was seeking. Many major organizations maintain internship programs as part of a broader corporate social responsibility (CSR) value.

Whether internships have value remains an open question. Most of the controversy does suggest that students need to know the details before agreeing to these arrangements, because not all internships offer a fair living wage or a strong career experience. HR departments are responsible for monitoring and designing internship programs.

Question 1: What are the potential challenges for Human Resource Department in the changing face of internship as it was originally arranged?

Question: What are the benefits of internship to the potential employee?

Question 3: How can the Human Resource Department mopnitor and design internship programs?

Answer 1

Ans. 1

The HR department always responsible to provide good learning opportunity to the job seeker and students rather than money. Internship program are good for applied purpose and learning but recent few years we could see the reality of internship is different from ideals.

HR department have responsibility to identify opportunities and student skill as well as condition of learning before recommending of any internship program.

Ans. 2

The benefits if internship belong to learning experiences and practical knowledge, if the internship program helping a person to learn work environment and culture, it might be helpful but internship for some dollars only is not good for future perspective. The purpose of internship is not to earn money but to learn and understand work culture and relations. So that if internship is fulfilling these values must be supported by HR and employees.

Ans. 3

The human resource department can monitor and manage internship program by the help of recruiters and students. Many institutions organize internship to reduce their cost rather than real purpose of internship so that HR department must be aware about such organizations because objective of internship is not earning money but to help fresher to understand work environment and implement classroom theories into the practical. Proper communication among fresher and employers shall help the department to monitor and manage internship program.

HR department should collect data from various institutions to analyse real situation of internship.