Is doing an internship worth it?

With fewer jobs and a need for financial security, students consider internships to differentiate themselves and gain exposure. But what do they stand to gain?

Even before the Central government’s ‘Skill India Mission’, an initiative launched to provide market-relevant skills and training to more than 40 crore young people in the country by the year 2023, took off in 2015, India’s internship culture underwent a silent revolution. This was largely due to the start-up boom and the country’s digital economy’s advent. 

The platform Internshala has been reporting jumps of between 30 and 80 per cent in internships listed by businesses yearly, depending on which year you look at. The same data reveals that more and more businesses are offering paid internships. Demand for interns is going up, and if you ask recruiters, they’ll say that the number of internship applicants is also increasing. The supply of interns is meeting its demand. Both sides of the market are growing, and hence, workplaces and careers are changing. The fundamental lines we’ve always known and understood between education and a career are slowly blurring. In many cases, interns are almost indistinguishable from entry-level employees, both to their employers and themselves, making our workplaces younger and more innovative than ever before.

A learning curve

In recent times, an internship has ceased to be just a ‘nice to have’ experience for a student. It has become a requirement to stand out from the crowd, paving the way to financial independence and, as a result, better career prospects. But as more and more organisations continue to streamline operations and downsize teams, with the pandemic still being the default excuse for the decision, are interns bearing the brunt of a burnt-out workforce, where quiet quitting (the art of not taking work too seriously) and moonlighting (taking up a second job or multiple other work assignments apart from one’s full-time job) are taking precedence?

Or are interns a form of ‘cheap labour’, helping corporates secure bottom-line savings? 

Sahil, who works for a multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Noida and requested to be quoted anonymously, tells The Established the interns he’s recruited stem purely from the need to get the grunt work done. “My team is inundated with work after witnessing two major layoffs in the past six months. The solution my reporting manager offered was: ‘Hire interns, they’ll get the work done because HR has frozen hiring’,” he says. Sahil has two interns who report to him, and while he wishes he had more specialised help to get the work done, he’s made peace with this new set-up. 

A strategic move

Nowadays, most internships are akin to entry-level positions. They are strategically hired under the umbrella term ‘intern’ to fulfill a specific role throughout their tenure. Learning, at the heart of the internship concept, occurs effectively in certain cases during the initial days. However, this learning quickly becomes monotonous when the repetitive tasks are assigned.

Shweta, an HR professional who requested anonymity, says most of the tasks assigned to interns are often leftovers. “Given that most corporations have strictly regulated the hiring process, for us, interns are a good alternative to help the senior professionals. This is done to avoid the expenditure of a standard salary package and other benefits,” she says.

Kaushal S, a computer science major, believes he hasn’t been hired full-time because companies want to avoid the monetary commitments of hiring a new employee while also enjoying the timely completion of work. “I’ve completed four internships so far–two while I was in my final year at university and the other two after graduating. I believe I was an asset because I would keep getting dumped with work. My last internship lasted six months, from the previously decided two months. While I have picked up on-the-job skills, I wish my seniors had spent more time training me because I was mostly expected to figure things out on my own. I was yelled at initially but quickly learnt to adapt to the requirements of my reporting managers,” he says.

Just cheap labour?

The concept of having interns not as learners but as cheap labour is slowly moving to a state where conversations expressing their frustration on not even getting weekends off is emerging. A pertinent question here is: Who is this internship about, then? 

Nida Naeem, a fashion journalist at a well-known magazine, says an internship only benefits one person: The intern. Naeem believes there’s a slim chance she would have bagged a full-time role if she hadn’t already interned with the publication in 2021. “During my internship, I got a lot of opportunities to interview established designers or these well-known creatives within the Indian landscape whom I might not have the contacts for or the resources to approach if it had not been under the magazine’s brand name. So in that way, the internship helped my portfolio,” she says. And now that Naeem has interns helping her carry out her daily tasks, she believes she’s better positioned to be a more mindful mentor to them. “There’s a marked difference in the attitude towards internships. Of course, it varies from individual to individual. But, I feel, for a lot of interns whom I have dealt with, having a brand name on their resume, or just being able to say that, okay, I have written for this publication or I’ve interviewed these people, matters more to them than improving their writing, learning new ways to approach a piece editorially or adapting to a certain tone of voice,” she says. 

Giving them their due

It’s also important to note that employing the term “intern” for all is not a homogeneous category. Many factors are responsible for the politics of the kind of treatment one receives as an intern.

“If you have come through a reference, the people in the organisation might go an extra mile to focus on the learning aspect. On the other hand, if you have gotten in through the normal procedure, it is most likely that they won’t care to invest in the same”, says Kaushal. 

And then there’s the anguish of Spotify intern Jewel Ham, who was never recognised for the Spotify Wrapped idea, which helped the platform massively grow its audience, is part of a larger battle in a world where interns are denied basic opportunities for exploration, learning, and minimum wages. 

Alina Israni Khemlani, founder of The College Guidance Co—a boutique counselling agency for higher education—says offering meaningful mentorship and giving Gen Z the liberty to do things their way, with sufficient monitoring, is a winning combination. “Most Gen Z kids I counsel are self-assured. When they come to me, they already have a list of pre-approved tasks they want to take up as interns. They have a clear sense of what they want to do with their degrees, but more significantly, who they want to become professionally, what they’re willing to work on, and the trade-offs they’re willing to make in their career. So organisations should hear them out and then decide how they can be of use in the larger scheme of things,” she says. 

Khemlani also believes some corporates are mindful of the interns they recruit because they value young talent and new perspectives, making the internship an insightful experience for the student applying. “Most students depend on such internships to guide them to the careers they finally want to take up, so a less than favourable experience will mostly leave them jaded. It’s not about getting a letter of completion anymore,” she says. 

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