05 Mar 2023  |   06:00am IST

Internships – Manifested Child Labour of the 21st Century

In this article, I would like to discuss a subject often overlooked when reflecting upon matters affecting today’s modern-day workplace worldwide. It is a subject that affects all of us, especially those of us looking for jobs after having completed our higher studies at reputed educational institutions. We do not come to realize it until we have immersed our feet into the corporate world – a world that comes with its unique set of challenges and adversities we need to entrust upon ourselves as we make haste with the realities of our current generation and era. There is no other better word to refer to this term we would have commonly heard about while at university or college in our localities – the so-called ‘Internships’ or ‘Apprenticeships’ as it is often referred to in the workplaces of our age.

Internships or Apprenticeships are short-term work contracts that provide students or fresh graduates with the opportunity to immerse themselves in real-life practical work experience in their desired fields or area of career interests before they decide to look out for a full-time job. They come out in a variety of formats - some of them structured to give the individual an experience in all aspects of the role, while some of them are not structured in which case the individual must demonstrate initiative in moving around and learning all aspects of the job during the contract period. Most of these short-term contracts vary between 3 months to a maximum length of 6 months, with a few of them extending to a period of 3 months after which the contract is terminated. In most cases, opportunities for Internships arise during the summer break in most parts of the world, or the gap between two semesters of the first or second year in a majority of business undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

While it is fair to say, that the experience and more so, the valuable skillsets gained through practical on-the-job pieces of training are extremely helpful when looking out for a new job on a full-time basis, the alarming question arises when employers use this as an ‘excuse’ to further complicate the application process for entry-level or associate positions in recent years. Today, a lot of new entry-level or associate openings advertised on prominent job boards and sites – be it LinkedIn, Indeed.com, or Naukri.com demand that candidates compulsorily possess at least 2-3 years of experience in the field, irrespective of whether he or she has completed a bachelor's or a master's degree. There are some that have even extended that to 5-6 years, which is quite shocking. Those of us who have been in the job market for a long time would acknowledge that this is a complete ‘exploitation’ of talent. In layman’s terms, this means that the candidate needs to become a manager in the field way before his or her age and be able to take on the role as a completely independent unit while at the same work collaboratively in a team. If we look at this more broadly, there is a lot of inherent discrimination in the system – a type of discrimination that deems you unfit for the market, a type of discrimination that demands you to take on Intern roles and work long hours on the same level as that of a full-time worker to get that valuable ‘experience’ demanded by the market and finally a type of discrimination that pays you ‘very less’ than what is legally approved as a starting salary by the government and various well-renowned industry bodies.

As freshers, we are looking to gain experience and more importantly learn and grow in a supportive and positive environment that is conducive to our overall career development and growth. For that to happen, we need a workplace that treats us and pays us equally so that we can also bring immense value to the organization and its long-term goals. Just like our predecessors or the previous generations, we also seek a workplace where we have seniors to be our mentors in the early stages of our careers. We are not the ‘know it all’ generation that many seem to think, given that we have all the latest technology and online resources at our disposal. We were born in the age when the internet just like books for the previous generations became an important resource and galvanizes our very existence with the prevalence of smartphones and smart devices shaping the way we communicate and move about in society.

Unfortunately, the preceding generations occupying middle-level and C-suite positions in today’s workforce do not get this point as they are still more focused on short-term gains, how they can produce more with the existing resources, and more importantly, how they can minimize as much as possible. We have seen that a lot today with instances of job cuts, salary cuts, terminations, and fears of recession dominating the headlines in the last couple of months. The point here is not to pinpoint the outliers or exacerbate a chicken-and-egg situation in our current job market. On the contrary, it is to merely state the fact that today’s management across boards and operational teams needs to be empathetic and understanding of the struggles and realities characterizing our generation. Granted that the previous generations have had to rough it out to make it further in life, we can in no way bring on the same expectations and realities to our generation given that we are now competing with technology and AI, once again reiterating the differences in our challenges and circumstances. ‘Empathy’ and ‘humanness’ are the need of the hour in helping bridge that gap in understanding across today’s multi-generational workforce and the way forward for a more better and promising reality.

(Bryce D’Souza is a young Goan writer and columnist based in Sharjah, U.A.E. He runs his own blog called ‘The Perceptionist’: https://perceptotravel.blogspot.com/)


IDhar UDHAR

Idhar Udhar