With the graduate recruitment market as competitive as ever, this year more than any has seen unpaid internships as a route into graduate employment come to the fore. A recent survey on the matter saw three quarters of participants respond that they believed employers should be required by law to pay their interns. But at the same time, more than half of the same group said that they themselves would take an unpaid internship if the opportunity arose.
Therein lies the cycle at the heart of the debate, and the reason that employers are able to continue to offer such schemes in the face of increasing opposition. Many careers services and recruitment agencies are now adopting a standpoint against unpaid internships, in the belief that they place unfair pressure on graduates already usually in a precarious financial position upon leaving university.Despite this growing trend, however, it is still possible to see the unpaid internship coming to have yet a greater role in the graduate recruitment market. With so much competition for places within companies, the nature in which they seek to fill these vacancies is increasingly changing. In this process, the unpaid internship could still play a part, perhaps offering a more concrete route into paid employment with a particular company. Until any such assurance is offered, however, the question of whether to commit to an unpaid internship remains a prominent one for many graduates, looking to balance the costs in terms of living and a potential commute with the rewards reaped in terms of experience and contacts.<br/><br/>Jon, GRB Journalist
