Your opinion on unpaid internships.

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About a year ago, I did an internship with a group in which I did a lot of canvassing and cold calls. As someone with Aspergers, this was probably one of the hardest jobs that I had ever held.

Recently, I have been offered another unpaid internship with a group that would have me doing similar tasks to the group above. The concerns I have are twofold: first, I am worried that, given my predisposition to being antisocial and quiet, I will not be able to do it to the best of my abilities. Second, I have the fear that, in general, unpaid internships are not exactly the best resume builders.

Does anyone have any experience doing an internship similar to the one I did last summer? Also, to those who have searched for paid work in a similar field to your internship, how helpful are unpaid internships in swaying an employer to hire you?

I did an unpaid internship at Rice University as part of the requirements for my master's degree. I had to work forty hours a week for a semester unpaid. While I would've liked to have been paid for my efforts, I accept that I had to do it for free. If it were required that we be paid, my guess is that finding an internship would've been much more difficult. I'm happy, since having the name Rice on my resume undoubtedly helped me land my first job.

Having said this, my understanding is that a lot of companies are using unpaid internships as a form of unpaid labor, with little or no benefit accruing to the worker. These I have plenty against. But since I think it would do more harm than good to pass laws dictating that interns be paid, I think it is up to the indivdual to decide for themselves whether to take an unpaid internship or not. I would not under any circumstances other than it being requisite to a degree of some kind.

The internship I am thinking of taking consists of about 15-20 hours a week, and there is a possible opportunity for course credit at 20 hours. I guess I need to research that some more.

As above. I do not see what benefit this will be to you. You have this experience already. If you want to donate your time you should see something in return.

Your counselor will just bounce the issue back to you because those people never take responsibility for any important decisions. To do so would expose them to liability because they lack the expert judgment they should have and hence are incompetent nincompoops who are utterly worthless in the job market but somehow fooled the VR agency, university, wherever into hiring their pathetic, lousy @$$3$.

Anyway, don't accept the internship unless they agree in writing or email to let you do certain things which you request directly pertinent to what your next job should be, e.g. assistant budget analyst. So if that's your goal and they won't agree to let you influence the budgeting process, then &*ck them! Be sure to explain why you're turning down a perfectly good offer to provide free slave labor to them in exchange for no beneficial training whatsoever to educate them as to why you're not a fool.

They are illegal
They are illegal
THEY ARE ILLEGAL

Unless, of course, it's a placement you are required to do for uni. Otherwise, if you have a set job and it's unpaid, you are being ripped off. Sadly, though, many people would take the internship knowing full well that they are being exploited. Hell, I might even do it as well because who the hell wouldn't want direct experience from the industry they are trying to work in?

Still. all this crap about "getting experience" is nonsense. Experience doesn't mean dick of all you are experiencing is how much you can get f****d over by greedy companies.

I know you're not all artists, but here is an example of my point:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWXYoD7wfOs[/youtube]

I think they're good for one purpose: to get people experience who can't get a job or get into the field otherwise. Many fields won't hire anyone without 1-3 years experience, but the catch is that it's impossible to get that initial experience if every job requires experience. Unpaid internships often allow the more desperate, who find themselves in such a situation, to gain that experience and then move to an experienced position after some time. Also sometimes companies will do an unpaid internship as a precursor to a full-time job, to test how good of a worker you are without taking any risk at all on their part, but you have to be very wary of this type of situation since it can easily lead to exploitation.

Then again, I recently read an article saying that companies look down on unpaid internships on a person's resume, since it shows that they were desperate or something. I guess you really can't win sometimes lol.

They suck, a lot but...

They give you experience, and experience is worth it's weight in gold.

(Just to clarify, I am interning for a local political party)

Hey everyone, just an update on how the internship is going, or, more like how it isn't going.

According to the Department of Labor, unpaid internships are mainly supposed to be for the benefit of the intern (gaining experience, networking with key individuals, etc.) without or at the detriment to the employer. I feel like my internship accomplishes neither of these goals.

Basically, I am acting as a glorified telemarketer on some days, calling likely individuals that we can get to go to meetings of our various chapters. Other days, I have to table on campuses trying to get members for our college clubs. I initially took the internship, then backed off and tried looking for paying work, then took it again as a means of staving off boredom and hopefully gaining "experience."

I am pretty solid in my commitment to get out of this unpaid internship, as it seems like more of a detriment to me and beneficial for the party that I am working for. As much as I believe in the cause, my wallet and the fact that I lack transportation to get to where I need to be without getting rides from people or riding my bike several miles have pretty much sealed the deal. So, how do I say that I want out?