In many cases applicants for university courses and later for jobs are asked to provide evidence of relevant experience in the form of internships or other types of work experience. However, these internships are notoriously hard to come by and it can often be lottery – ie who you know, or who your parents know. In the case of Covid 19 almost all of these internships have disappeared overnight.
For example, applicants to study medicine are expected to have amassed an impressive record of relevant experience, such as volunteering or helping out in medically related environments. However, these can be incredibly difficult to find, especially if you don’t happen to have family members who are in the medical profession. It’s not a coincidence that many doctors come from families in which one or more family members is a doctor. Add a pandemic to the mix and most of these work experience opportunities have dried up.
Many businesses meanwhile use ‘unpaid’ internships as a way to assess how a person performs in the workplace. Employers will frequently only offer a job on the back of a successful internship. With companies delaying hiring new graduates because of the pandemic this avenue into the world of work is no longer available.
But what if we could set up a national registry of high quality paid internships that could be applied for by anyone on a fair and equal basis. By seeking to set up a gold-standard system of internships covering a whole range of professions and jobs we could offer young people (from high school students and undergraduates to new graduates) and from all walks of life, accessible and rewarding work experience in a multitude of different fields. This would give students or graduates the opportunity to experience different types of work and see if it is something they feel is right for them. It would also give them the opportunity to have a rewarding experience and at the same time make a useful contribution. Students could have the opportunity to build up a ‘file’ of experiences from high school through university and beyond. These internships should be properly scrutinized to make sure they provide a high quality experience for which the intern is paid fairly for their time. It would end the unfairness of the internship lottery where you can lose out if you don’t have ‘connections.’ Unregulated internships should be banned. There should no longer be any exploitation of interns. Instead companies or institutions should be encouraged to sign up to this new scheme as a way to attract the very best and to ‘give back’ to young people from all backgrounds and ethnicities.
If the government were to back this scheme they could give private business a financial incentive to support this new body, perhaps in the form of a tax break or a subsidy. Businesses should be encouraged to join the system as a way to find the best young employees and also to be rewarded perhaps in the form of a ‘rating’ or index for the quality of internship and/or mentorship they provide. Interns could be encouraged to give feedback on their internship experience.
In the event of an unusual situation such as the pandemic, this internship registry could be used in two different ways. Firstly, it could provide an element of ‘work experience’ to replace parts of a school or university course which has had to be cut. Excellence could be rewarded with a positive evaluation. Secondly, in the case of the National Health Service for example or the care sector, young interns could be offered the opportunity to help pick up some of the extra workload – for example being trained to administer vaccinations, helping out in care homes, helping with work-place testing, filling in for colleagues who are isolating or a multitude of other jobs.
We should regard this extraordinary time as an opportunity to transform young people’s lives by giving them all the chance to find their dream career and at the same time be given back their sense of self-esteem. Society should value the next generation – they are the people who having lived through this experience will be the ones to help society deal with it better next time. Instead of forcing them to sit out the pandemic at home we should give them the chance to make a contribution and at the same time give them hope for their futures once Covid has passed.
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