On Internships
September 13, 2009 – A Rant On The Inflexibility Of U.S. Hiring Practices In The Midst Of A Recession [Alt. Title – On Internships]
For the past two years, since some particular date in 2007, we have been hearing about a recession of depressing proportions, and some of us have been unfortunate to bear the weight of this recession head-on. Businesses have been shuttered, jobs have been lost, and most likely more than one family has decided that it has had enough with the most recent in the long line of California gold rushes and moved back to Alabama….Or wherever.
Since the beginning of the recession, the Bay Area (Silicon Valley to the uninitiated) has lost 183,000 jobs. When compared to the 143,000 job gain from mid-2003 to mid-2007, the statistics begin to feel far heavier. In the midst of a general leanification of American business, some the grand forces of globalization which has enabled InfoSys (an Indian company) to become the biggest business services provider in the world (work many US employees now do for much higher pay). As the US (and the innovation driver Silicon Valley) shed jobs, the work may move to places where the work force is as if not more educated, and as if not more experienced in their fields. So then, how do we maintain our competitive advantage in a hostile economic and global employment environment?
The answer is as simple as replicating what our competitors abroad have done here at home; low-cost workers. And no, I am in no way suggesting filling busses with Latin American workers and paying them pittance wages in order to build our infrastructure, the US is already full of a huge educated or education-in-progress workforce willing to work for below minimum wage. They are college students, and they are under-utilized. Neither is the answer to create unpaid internships in any company which desires to have an employee working for the singular benefit of taking up a paragraph of space on their resumes. Unpaid internships, though able to create some future opportunity for a young person, often pale in comparison with minimum-wage work at the local Café. Even there will a worker be exposed to common business practices.
Listen, Business. I haven’t gone through all of your financial reporting, and I don’t know how much money you have left over after for new hires or interns but I can bet that you have some money left over to give 150-200 dollars per week to a young person in order to motivate them to perform. Students aren’t as worthless as they may seem to you, many are highly educated in the software you use on a daily basis. Business Schools teach classes entirely based around Microsoft Excel, all students have used Microsoft Word, a pirated version of Photoshop, and have previous sales experience (be it retail or small-time drug dealing), and many others have a keen understanding of what it means to be a good employee. Not only will your new intern be working to gain experience in the field, which will enable them (and our country) to be more competitive in future employment environments, but they will be delighted that you provide them with the beer money they need to seek some cultured repose on the weekends.
Given this, I would expect businesses to be fighting over low-wage and highly-educated employees in their own country who are not only able to do much of what we are outsourcing, but will be delighted to fill the coffee order as well, but what are the facts? Monster.com, one of the biggest job search engines, and one which many turn to in order to find their next job currently (as of 9/13/09) list 723 internships. That’s 723 internships for the entire country, and only 96 of those are in California, a state known for its innovation drive. 43 of those 723 internships are located in the District of Columbia, and we all know what happens to interns there…
So what are we saying to our young people with our hiring practices? Have we given up on innovation so much that we offer more opportunities per employer in the field of lobbying and bureaucracy than in tech and internet? We need to stop putting the blame on our eroding competitive advantage on the educational system, because education doesn’t drive the economy directly, but employers and businesses do. So when you turn to each other in the board meeting and say that you’re unable to fill positions in the United States and need to outsource, you will not only be defeating the home economy, but will be falling prey to your own shortsightedness.
