Do you use interns in your company/agency?

[RobertFisher]

I was reading a CNN article about interns at the White House and how much it costs them financially as the position is unpaid. Recently there was a story re a Bank of America intern who had died after working 72 hours straight - I did not read up on it and have no opinion, but interns are in the news.

We use interns regularly and we only use paid interns. The rationale behind it is that we are not looking for free labor, we are looking for bright people who want to learn and contribute and if they are going to contribute, why would we not pay them. Secondarily, whenever I have been in a place where the interns were not paid, they seemed to be in charge of coffee and donuts. (And that's my job.)

We want to have them teaching and learning from day one. We place real client issues in their hands and we are very serious about it. The work is always checked by a senior staff member, but I never cease to be amazed by what they can produce when you believe in them. We recently had 6 heading back to college or HS and we put on a crepe party with a local creperie in our offices. It was a huge success. It was funny to see a couple of other marketing firms that know us come out within a day or two with how they are looking to hire interns. As I looked at those and others, I found several large agency types stating they take interns but they are not paid and mainly because of the superior experience, etc. So, if you have interns do you pay them or not and why? I am not looking for anything around right or wrong, I am trying to let you know if you are diligent in hiring them, you will be astounded at what they and you can achieve.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi guys,

Robert excellent question.

Just to clear up the legal question I did some searching and you are right there are circumstances in which you do not have to pay interns I thought you guys might find it interesting to see the actual law.

I found the official law at the Fact Sheet #71: Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm

& a PDF

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf

there are certain things that will allow you to take on an intern without pay. They are listed in the links above.

You are correct there definitely are situations in which you can legally not pay for an intern.

I thought you guys might think this was interesting.

I know when I was in school I guess you could call what I did an internship I was not paid but learned a great deal and am more than grateful for it today.

I think what you said about actually seeing somebody being able to accomplish something that they believed they could not or possibly without the internship would not have looked in that particular field only to find out they are good at that type of work in this case marketing.

I also want to say kudos to you for telling the intern that said

"I can't do this, this is not really my forte."

Your response of

"we do not have an option to tell a client we cannot do something. I would appreciate you going back and finishing, and then he looked down at his work."

Very professional and very true you would never want to have to give a client that excuse and I guess for that in turn you live and you learn.

I think everyone will agree when it comes to personal lives or professional non-of us have not made mistakes. However to have the wisdom of somebody there that has literally accomplished what these people are trying to do with their lives is such a good thing for them and for us because the more we can teach somebody in my opinion the better we become at our jobs.

Outstanding question.

Respectfully,

Thomas

[RobertFisher]

I will respond to all here and I sincerely appreciate what each of you has shared. 
There is no law that one of our firms is aware of re interns. We do have schools that try to push unpaid interns (I think they are afraid people won't pay) and we just say we only take paid interns. Our interns in high school start at $10 per hour and college start at $12. We do have interns who are given raises fairly soon in the internship because they prove themselves early on.

Interestingly, all must write. (EGOL). We had a computer science major just finishing freshman year at college and this was his first job. He is going to be excellent at Computer Science...he is a brilliant writer and he never knew it. Brilliant. I smile writing about him.

One of our interns walked into our VPs office and he had been given a task of designing wire frame and comp for a client once the KWA and sitemap were finished. I was sitting in the conference room next door when he said to the VP "I can't do this, this is not really my forte." Johnray paused a brief moment and said OK, I need you to understand something, this is business, we do not have an option to tell a client we cannot do something. I would appreciate you going back and finishing, and then he looked down at his work.

The intern nailed wire frame and design with little intervention, but he wanted to quit. This was not his area of expertise. Of course we look over all and our clients are protected with NDA and non competes, etc. But it's amazing to watch as the people realize they can do more than they ever dreamed. It is truly fulfilling.

To each of you I say Kudos. I would love a world that was open source, open education, and where interns were brought in to learn and thrive in an organization. We now have two interns in good positions who are no longer interns. One in web dev and the other in writing and social media.

Thanks to all of you,

Robert

[EGOL]

I did a one-semester internship while in college.  They paid me $2/hour - which was more than the minimum wage at the time and tells you a little about my age.   It was a great experience because I attended public meetings and wrote summaries about them for a member of the governor's cabinet.  I also examined public utility tariffs and wrote summaries about them for the same person.  My supervisor critiqued my writing severely and that made me a much better writer in a very short time.  Great experience.

I lived several hundred miles from home for this work and the expenses of living in the city in low-rent housing consumed my paychecks.  Full-time internships at my university were for 16 academic credits and I also had to pay full tuition and fees to receive them.  I made a few extra bucks from plasmapheresis looks at arms.

In a previous career I worked for a government agency and we had interns every summer and they were paid slightly more than the minimum wage.  Our office was in a University city.  Although the students didn't have to establish living quarters far away what we paid them barely covered their living expenses and they had to pay tuition to the university for the internship. We knew that the interns would be there in the summer and had projects for them.  Many of them did field work that could only be done in summer weather.

In another career I was a professor and saw students complete internships at many government agencies, companies and organizations.  The university required a written job description from the employer that needed faculty approval.  That helped  employers plan the experience and demonstrate that it would meet university expectations and the award of credit hours to the student (which the student had to pay for). The employer knew that at the end of the experience that the student would prepare a report of what was done and faculty would compare that to the job description.  About 1/2 of the internships were paid.  If you looked at the list of organizations, the ones that paid were usually the good experiences.

(Personal opinion here... If a school does not require an internship then it is usually only the highly motivated students who seek them.  If you are drawing from this pool you are probably getting high caliber.   However, if the school requires an internship then there can be a lot of mediocre students looking for positions and the applicant pool will be different.  If this is your pool, early applicants who have bright eyes and spring in their step are probably your best bet.   Be ready to accept applications early.   'nuff said.)

I currently don't have interns at my office.  I am trying to run a very small ship and trying to be retired.  If I had interns I would pay them the starting rate of a professional employee.   I would be especially interested in 4.0 English majors who have a demonstrated life interest in the content area of my websites.   If you want them to do valuable work that remains after the internship then you want a good written record.  Mine would probably be writing some content and I am really picky.  I would need good people for the experience to fit well with me.  Thus the better rate of pay.

I think I should write to the White House.

[Ron_McCabe]

Robert,

I see our interns as our top people down the road.  We use our internship as a way to support people as they save for or go to college. We want top notch people working with us who are engaged in building the business. It is hard to get most people real engaged unless you are compensating them in some way.

I think it is appropriate to pay them at or near minimum wage to start as the company needs to invest in them to get them up to speed. As they start to contribute more and learn more we structure their compensation so that they can make more.  In my opinion one of the best lessons you can teach someone is that,"you eat what you hunt and kill" in the work place.  I think a performance based compensation and a clear path of advancement encourages growth.

Anyway that's my two cents.

Ron

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Robert,

I think what you've brought up is extremely interesting. We have one in turn and currently we are not paying them at their own request. This is odd I know and I believe possibly illegal.

I think federal law states that you must pay an intern for any job you would pay an employee to do.

I've never met anyone who comes to a business and asks can I work for free without anything in return.

This particular intern needs this internship and so you know we are in fact paying her even though she keeps refusing our checks. Simply because we will have trouble on our hands possibly if we don't.

I agree with your statement about wanting to pay people so they will have the incentive to work hard for you.

I do pay my interns although I do only have one at this current time as school has just restarted.

I have always given a paycheck of $12 an hour to any intern we have had. The maximum amount of interns we have ever had is four for blueprint marketing however my main business is in plastics and the amount of interns we have had their is well over 40.

Every one of them is paid as well and we essentially have copied the word went to pay you rather you like it or not planned from MTI Polyexe for instance http://www.mtipolyexe.com is built on Hubspot (we are not abandoning hub spot just hosting on WordPress) and currently it is the interns job to rebuild the website in WordPress we are using a dead domain as a staging server please feel free to take a look at what they've accomplished so far.

http://www.fundblueprint.com

&

http://mtipolyexe.wpengine.com

my other company that manufactures plastics.

My advice to you is make sure you pay them regardless just because you never know with federal law.

I do think they benefit quite a bit by learning from somebody who has been there and done that as long as they're interested and really care about coming to work I'm cool with taking them on. I have had some interns that have blatantly no interest at all and unfortunately we have to let them go.

I hope my story of how we use interns in my marketing company has been of help to you. If you would like to know more about how we use them in the plastics business I would be happy to share my stories with you.

Sincerely,

Thomas