Landing your dream job can be an uphill slog, but most of us hope that with enough hard work, determination and talent we'll get there – eventually.
Unfortunately, that's not always the case – with many companies still insisting unpaid internships are the way to land that job. With the majority of young people unable to afford working for free – with costly things like travel, food and general living expenses to factor in – campaigners argue that certain industries are stopping talented individuals from modest financial backgrounds from getting on the career ladder.Which clearly, is pretty bloody unfair.
New research by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has discovered that professions like law, media, medicine and fashion have rejected efforts to reduce the number of interns working for free – and that 74% of the public believe that a member of their own family wouldn't be able to afford an unpaid internship. But with 37% of graduates working in these sectors having previously worked as interns before finally becoming employed, what are we meant to do? As a result, the commission are calling for unpaid internships to finally be banned – giving everybody – no matter their background – equal opportunities.
This comes as welcome news for young people struggling to get their careers started, according to Tanya de Grunwald, founder of careers blog Graduate Fog and author of How to Get a Graduate Job in a Recession. "This report adds weight to what anyone under 30 knows already - that unpaid internships are unfair, exploitative and the practice must be stopped," she says.
"For too long, the issue has been dismissed as just young people whining about making tea for free. That's not what this is. In the last few years, hundreds of thousands of bright, hard-working graduates have been exploited doing work they should have been paid for, and even larger numbers have been excluded from the best jobs because they can't afford to intern for free first. This is appalling. And the report is right – when people are expected to work for free for months before they are even considered for paid work, there are huge knock-on effects for the whole of society.
"If you're under 35, you've almost certainly done an unpaid internship (or you know someone who has). Older people often think that unpaid internships lead to paid jobs, but that isn't even true anymore. Often, all they lead to is yet another unpaid internship. Many employers run a 'revolving door' policy on interns, replacing one with another at the end of the placement. It's great that the report talks about a need for the law to be tightened - although actually most unpaid internships are already illegal, if the person is doing the job of a 'worker', with set hours and set responsibilities. What we need is for the reporting system to be improved, and for penalties for rogue employers to be much tougher. It's not enough to make a boss award the intern the wages they should have paid them in the first place, there should be proper criminal prosecutions and large fines."
Here at Cosmo we're firmly in support of these plans, and with 65% of business leaders saying they're in favour of banning unpaid internships too, we hope it's just a matter of time before this is actually enforced.
