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Intern like a boss
A new University of Melbourne podcast covers everything from getting an internship to wowing employers.
Buffy Gorilla and Dan Woodman interviewed by Loren Smith
Hamish began his editorial internship at The Herald Sun“ very tired” on a New Year’ s Day. His first task? To approach strangers on the street and ask them if they had already broken their New Year’ s resolutions.
Surprisingly to some, he found this to be a“ really, really fun experience”. Better yet, it eventually led to a paid position.
It must be noted that Hamish is one of the lucky ones: although a third of 18 to 64-year-old Australians interned at least once between 2011 and 2016, only 4 per cent were offered a job afterwards.
So, how do you get the gig? Starting Somewhere, which interviewed Hamish, attempts to answer this question. The new University of Melbourne podcast’ s 10 episodes cover everything from getting an internship and, once you’ re there, wowing employers, to the seedier side of unpaid work experience: exploitation.
The audio series arose as internships are no longer really a matter of‘ if’, but‘ how’.
“ Generation Y are the most educated generation, but the transition to full-time employment is becoming increasingly challenging,” says Dan Woodman, a Starting Somewhere contributor and University of Melbourne associate professor in sociology.
“ Internships are a way to try and stand out from the pack, but they can be good and bad. Finding the right one could help set the foundation for your career, helping you cross that crucial bridge from the classroom to secure, meaningful work, but it’ s important to remember that they can be exploitative as well.”
Campus Review spoke with the podcast’ s producer, Buffy Gorilla, as well as Woodman, to find out more about their views on internships.
CR: How important are internships to students today and how does this compare with the past? DW: You just have to open the paper almost any day and you’ ll see something about the challenges of the labour market for young people. And one of the things that’ s really changed is that it’ s a much slower and messier process to transition from education to a full-time, ongoing job that feels like it’ s progressing somewhere. That’ s happened despite an unbroken run of a quarter of a century of economic growth and lots of people investing a lot of time in education and their studies. Despite all these changes, and so many patterns that have unfolded around the world, getting your foot in the door, particularly for the graduate jobs, has become a little bit harder. And you need those extra things on your CV, as well as the education, to really make a start. That’ s the context in which internships are growing in popularity.
I’ d like to know your thoughts on the role higher education institutions should or could take in facilitating internships. DW: I think that there’ s going to be growing pressure on universities to be doing more and more in this space as part of a broader push for some better workintegrated learning.
Universities have a role in making sure the internships available to people are of a high quality, well structured and distributed fairly, because the more unregulated internships and the ones that aren’ t attached to educational programs are riskier and can lead to poorer outcomes and, occasionally, exploitation.
So, as the pressure to do an internship grows from students, the government and others, universities must ensure that the internships we provide are good ones.
It’ s also an opportunity for universities to do a better job of working with partners outside of the university sector. So, in that sense, it’ s going to be a growing pressure, but also an opportunity.
I understand that Starting Somewhere covers the process of turning an internship into a job. How might that happen? BG: That’ s episode 10. We’ re not all the way buttoned up on that yet, but we have spoken with interns who have been able to leverage their experiences into early offers for jobs at EY, for example, or ANZ, or even part-time roles ongoing after their internships finish at some news organisations.
From what we’ ve heard in the podcast, a lot of it is leveraging what they’ re doing day to day at their internships and making the most of it.
It’ s not a guarantee, and we make sure that’ s up front in the podcast, but we provide some tips in terms of using LinkedIn and making sure you’ re networking while doing your internship, getting involved in the different activities, maybe identifying a mentor within the organisation where your interning can work in your favour.
Which industries are more likely to lead to employment for interns? DW: One thing that’ s worth mentioning is that internships aren’ t brand new. There are some types of work where on-thejob placement and training have been an essential part of the process for a very long time. So, things like nursing and medicine broadly, and that’ s expanding. In the creative industry, which has faced a lot of disruption, including journalism, they’ re becoming more and more common. What’ s interesting is, across the board, internships are becoming one of the things that people are using to try and stand out from the crowd.
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