WANTED: A Slave For Three Months +
By Henrietta Hammonds
Monday 28th September 2009
Monday 28th September 2009
Interested? You’d be surprised how many people are.
INTERNSHIPS: supposedly one of the best ways to improve your CV and make you much more employable at the end of your degree. But are they really worth it? Like thousands of other students across the globe, I spent many an hour at the start of second semester emailing my CV and covering letters to MPs, political organisations, charities, newspapers, etc. etc. You name it; I tried it. I trawled through every single entry on ‘Work for an MP’ (w4mp.org for anyone interested for next summer!) as well as numerous other student employment and experience sites. Several hours and multiple cups of tea later (well it was actually glasses of wine towards the end to break up the sheer tediousness of the repetitive application process), I sat back to wait for the job offers, albeit largely unpaid, to roll in. And then the emails started to arrive. All 0 of them. Yep, that’s right. None. So it wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought to offer myself for slave labour for an entire 3 months. MPs tend not to like undergraduates...why have an undergraduate work for you for free for 3 months when there are thousands of graduates with first class honours from the world’s best universities practically fighting to be your slave for up to a year? Convinced that an internship was the only way to improve my résumé this summer, I was not to be defeated. So I left it a couple of days to allow a few more adverts to appear online, and then I started the whole process again. And, result! I got an email back, and after a brief phone conversation I was invited to go for an interview in Westminster at the end of the Easter break. Unfortunately, it was Westminster the district, not Westminster the political hotspot of British politics. I went for the interview, and out of ten candidates I was lucky enough to get it. It might not be exactly what I wanted, but it was something. To be precise, it was a fairly small public affairs company, but I thought that it could be exactly what I needed: three months of work in a political environment, with a guarantee from the Chief Executive that I would not be given the menial tasks of photocopying or tea making. So I accepted. The application process was hard enough, surely now it would all be plain sailing? Wrong. I arrive at half past eight sharp on my first day looking as smart as I could, having, for the first time since I became a university student last September, ironed my clothes (shock! horror!). I ring the doorbell. I ring it again. There’s no answer. Immediate panic begins to set in...Perhaps this is me just being a drama queen but I suddenly have visions of the headlines of the recession: “2 million UK businesses forced to close in the last month”. So I quickly grab my phone and go to the website to see if there is one of those liquidation notices. Nope. So I wait. After an hour of sitting in the lovely London weather (which on that particular day involved torrential rain) someone shows up and lets me in. It can only get better from here. And so it begins: the piles and piles of work that is thrown in my direction, the rubbish research on tax that no one else wants to do, the long hours, the endless phone calls, etc. Incorrect. The Chief Exec was right – I wasn’t given menial tasks to do. I wasn’t given anything to do. Not really. Maybe the occasional email flung my way a couple of times a day asking me to look something up. It takes approximately ten minutes, and then it’s over. Back to endless reading of BBC news, and other such non-social networking sites. In fact, even Facebook was allowed at certain times of the day. Facebook has never been so boring. I had to be at my desk from half past eight in the morning every day until half five in the evening. No lunch break. Lunch has to be eaten at the desk. Why? No idea. It’s not as if I have pressing deadlines. But I will be sticking this one out until the end. Why? It’s not as if I’m getting paid. The real reason: I have to start somewhere. I’ve done “internships” in the past, and they have been pretty useful. But as a high school student it’s pretty difficult to get anything over 2 weeks. They are more like work experience. This one is 3 months – the same length as the shortest internship for an MP. And I am so grateful for the opportunity this company has given me. Because you know what? No matter how little work they have given me to do, I have still been immersed in the environment. The conversations that pass between the partners in the office, the call from an MP that needs a briefing immediately that causes a massive buzz of electrifying panic to spread through the office (even reaching me, on occasion, when I get asked to contribute in some way). And above all, when I start the entire application process again in February in preparation for next summer, I will have a new addition to my CV. “Three month internship in a well-known public affairs company in the heart of London, working with some of the best political minds of our day”. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So in answer to my own question: Yes. Internships really are worth it. You might make tea, you might do nothing, or you might be lucky and really do something amazing. But whatever you do, ultimately you, and your CV, will always benefit.
INTERNSHIPS: supposedly one of the best ways to improve your CV and make you much more employable at the end of your degree. But are they really worth it? Like thousands of other students across the globe, I spent many an hour at the start of second semester emailing my CV and covering letters to MPs, political organisations, charities, newspapers, etc. etc. You name it; I tried it. I trawled through every single entry on ‘Work for an MP’ (w4mp.org for anyone interested for next summer!) as well as numerous other student employment and experience sites. Several hours and multiple cups of tea later (well it was actually glasses of wine towards the end to break up the sheer tediousness of the repetitive application process), I sat back to wait for the job offers, albeit largely unpaid, to roll in. And then the emails started to arrive. All 0 of them. Yep, that’s right. None. So it wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought to offer myself for slave labour for an entire 3 months. MPs tend not to like undergraduates...why have an undergraduate work for you for free for 3 months when there are thousands of graduates with first class honours from the world’s best universities practically fighting to be your slave for up to a year? Convinced that an internship was the only way to improve my résumé this summer, I was not to be defeated. So I left it a couple of days to allow a few more adverts to appear online, and then I started the whole process again. And, result! I got an email back, and after a brief phone conversation I was invited to go for an interview in Westminster at the end of the Easter break. Unfortunately, it was Westminster the district, not Westminster the political hotspot of British politics. I went for the interview, and out of ten candidates I was lucky enough to get it. It might not be exactly what I wanted, but it was something. To be precise, it was a fairly small public affairs company, but I thought that it could be exactly what I needed: three months of work in a political environment, with a guarantee from the Chief Executive that I would not be given the menial tasks of photocopying or tea making. So I accepted. The application process was hard enough, surely now it would all be plain sailing? Wrong. I arrive at half past eight sharp on my first day looking as smart as I could, having, for the first time since I became a university student last September, ironed my clothes (shock! horror!). I ring the doorbell. I ring it again. There’s no answer. Immediate panic begins to set in...Perhaps this is me just being a drama queen but I suddenly have visions of the headlines of the recession: “2 million UK businesses forced to close in the last month”. So I quickly grab my phone and go to the website to see if there is one of those liquidation notices. Nope. So I wait. After an hour of sitting in the lovely London weather (which on that particular day involved torrential rain) someone shows up and lets me in. It can only get better from here. And so it begins: the piles and piles of work that is thrown in my direction, the rubbish research on tax that no one else wants to do, the long hours, the endless phone calls, etc. Incorrect. The Chief Exec was right – I wasn’t given menial tasks to do. I wasn’t given anything to do. Not really. Maybe the occasional email flung my way a couple of times a day asking me to look something up. It takes approximately ten minutes, and then it’s over. Back to endless reading of BBC news, and other such non-social networking sites. In fact, even Facebook was allowed at certain times of the day. Facebook has never been so boring. I had to be at my desk from half past eight in the morning every day until half five in the evening. No lunch break. Lunch has to be eaten at the desk. Why? No idea. It’s not as if I have pressing deadlines. But I will be sticking this one out until the end. Why? It’s not as if I’m getting paid. The real reason: I have to start somewhere. I’ve done “internships” in the past, and they have been pretty useful. But as a high school student it’s pretty difficult to get anything over 2 weeks. They are more like work experience. This one is 3 months – the same length as the shortest internship for an MP. And I am so grateful for the opportunity this company has given me. Because you know what? No matter how little work they have given me to do, I have still been immersed in the environment. The conversations that pass between the partners in the office, the call from an MP that needs a briefing immediately that causes a massive buzz of electrifying panic to spread through the office (even reaching me, on occasion, when I get asked to contribute in some way). And above all, when I start the entire application process again in February in preparation for next summer, I will have a new addition to my CV. “Three month internship in a well-known public affairs company in the heart of London, working with some of the best political minds of our day”. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So in answer to my own question: Yes. Internships really are worth it. You might make tea, you might do nothing, or you might be lucky and really do something amazing. But whatever you do, ultimately you, and your CV, will always benefit.
