You're hired: the real apprentices

Every career has to start somewhere, and increasingly students are opting to do unpaid – or not highly paid – internships to kick-start their working lives. KATE HOLMQUISTmeets some students who are interning this summer

SOME CALL it the new route to employment, others say it’s about investing in your CV. Whatever the euphemism, being an intern often means working for little or nothing. Always popular in the US, internship has taken off in Ireland as thousands of university students and graduates use their summer holidays to get a foothold on the employment ladder.

Gary Timpson, managing director of film animation company Kavaleer Productions believes interning has replaced the traditional job interview. Several key employees at his company started out as interns and he says Kavaleer, whose cartoon Garth & Bevis distributed worldwide by the BBC, thrives on the "fresh air and enthusiasm" that young interns bring. "The crazy thing is that a lot of the interns are not green – some are quite advanced in their skill base and become indispensable."

Kavaleer recently took part in Best in Show, an internship competition organised by the Digital Hub in Dublin. Two-week unpaid internships were awarded to five finalists in the areas of animation; film and video production; graphic design/visual communication; interior design; and multimedia. Kavaleer, judging the animation category, chose Bruno Palma.

Competitions and university-to-business links are formal ways of landing a summer internship, but the informal approach can work too. Emer McCormack (28) says she owes her current career to the day she walked in to her local takeaway in Churchtown, Dublin, and offered to make them a website for free. This led to McCormack becoming online marketing manager with Just Eat, an online takeaway ordering company.

This summer, McCormack is hiring interns of her own. “I’m a strong believer that you are in control of your own destiny and if you want something bad enough, you will go out and get it,” she says. Degrees and qualifications mean nothing when you haven’t got the work experience, says McCormack, who has degrees and a master’s degree. “Why wouldn’t you work for free? I went out there and landed that job. It’s a matter of getting off your bum and doing it. And that’s the same sort of person I will hire for internships at Just Eat,” she says.

Noomi Egan (27) also got her current job with PR company DHR by first interning there unpaid. “It’s an opportunity for you and the employer to see if you like each other. Interning is your only chance to get more hard skills and if you’re at home doing nothing, it’s not good for your CV.”

Egan does warn, however, that there may be a fine line between gaining useful experience and being taken advantage of. Good internships aren’t about making coffee and running the photocopier, and they have definite time-frames. “A lot of my peers have done internships for months, either unpaid, or on very low pay. One girl I know worked four months for €50 per week.” In Sweden, she says, unpaid internship isn’t allowed due to the potential for exploitation.

“I have been very happy in my internships, but I think some commercial companies take advantage.”

University interns are paid €18,000 annually pro rata at Accenture in Dublin, a management consulting, technology and outsourcing company that will hire 60 graduates this year. The company’s internship programme is “essential”, says Susanne Jeffrey, country human resources manager. “They get a foot in the door and hopefully a job straight out of college,” she says.

Tied to academic programmes at universities and institutes, the Accenture internship programme gives students work, while helping them bond with the company through social events and mentoring in the hope most will apply for a job after graduation.

MY INTERNSHIP Bruno Palma; intern at Kavaleer Productions, Dublin

Unpaid internship is essential to building a career in the film animation industry, says Bruno Palma (30), originally from Portugal.

But getting a place as an intern has become so competitive, hopefuls must approach the application process as seriously as they would a job application. “You need persistence, patience and people skills,” he advises.

Palma was awarded a two-week unpaid internship with Kavaleer, a film animation company in Dublin, as part of The Digital Hub's "Best in Show" competition. Palma made the grade with his short film, Olinda, completed after five years of study at Ballyfermot College of Further Education.

This will be the second internship for Palma, who trained in Portugal as a primary school teacher specialising in visual communication for children, before changing tack and applying to Ballyfermot because the fees were cheaper than other European animation schools.

To survive financially, he worked part time as a crepe-maker in Temple Bar. Last summer, he interned for three weeks with Cartoon Saloon in Dublin, and was rewarded with six months’ paid work there. This summer, he’s waiting to begin his Kavaleer stint and carefully applying for internships to other film animation studios. “Internship is a way to get your foot in the door. You meet people and build a portfolio of connections. Connections are very, very important – that’s the reality.”

Palma's Olindacan be viewed on thedigitalhubexhibit.com/bestinshow

MY INTERNSHIP; Rebecca Horgan(21), from Ballinveltig, Bishopstown, Co Cork, intern at Accenture, Dublin

Some interns are lucky enough to be paid, even if it’s not much. Rebecca Horgan, from Co Cork, is doing a six-month internship at Accenture through a joint programme with University College Cork, where she has just finished her third year of a BCom degree.

Beautiful weather hasn’t deterred her from spending the summer in an office, as she hopes to become one of Accenture’s 1,200 or so employees following her graduation next year.

“It’s not so bad. They keep us happy,” says Horgan, who is working on a project for a large utility company. “In college, we learn theory and facts and I’ve never been able to apply that to the real business world. Now, I’m making connections between what we are learning in college and what happens in the real world,” she says.

She’s earning €1,500 per month, of which €480 goes on rent and she’s saving to take a two-week holiday before returning to college.

“So far, it’s been an amazing time and I would love to come back to work here,” she says.

As well as being put to work on consulting projects, she also attends master classes on a range of skills. “Every day we’re doing something new. It has exceeded my expectations.”

MY INTERNSHIP; Moira Reillyintern at Birds of Prey Centre, Ailwee Caves, the Burren, Co Clare

For UCC zoology student Moira Reilly, working for free all summer long is “fun”, not work, though it does involve a lot of cleaning up after birds.

When she was younger, going on dolphin watches and working at local stables, Reilly decided her ideal career would be working outdoors with animals and interacting with the public as an educator.

At the Birds of Prey Centre at Ailwee Caves, she is doing just that – answering questions from the public while learning how to do “flying displays” with an owl, a falcon and a hawk.

Because she has volunteered, Reilly believes her CV will show that she has a genuine interest in the career, as well as initiative. She also hopes to use her experience with birds of prey in her fourth year at UCC, where her final-year university project will be on the behaviour of raptors (birds, to you and me) in the Burren.

After graduation, Reilly wants to travel and work with exotic animals around the world. Some of her classmates are volunteering this summer in the African savannah. “Any project like that would be brilliant,” she says.

MY INTERNSHIP: The Google InternsTobias Marmann (27), Giacomo Summa (24) and Marcel Puppik (22), interns at Google in Dublin

Interning is like an 11-week long job interview, though an enjoyable and stimulating one, says a smiling Giacomo Summa, from Lake Como in Italy.

This summer Summa is spending 11 weeks in Dublin as an intern at Google’s European headquarters in the Docklands, before heading off to MIT in Boston to do his master’s degree in management. He has also done internships in investment banking in London, in microcredit in Bangladesh, and at the UN in New York – all organised by Google in cooperation with Summa’s university in France, HEC.

Many university graduates his age spend a gap year travelling for pleasure, but Summa prefers work. “You meet the locals and you have fun as well,” he says.

Summa hopes to be employed fulltime by Google after completing his master’s degree, as does Marcel Puppik, from Germany, another Google intern in Dublin this summer.

Puppik is combining international marketing with his experience in the cosmetics industry. The connection may not be obvious, but special interests such as these are prized at Google. You need to be smart, motivated and to know lots of different areas from music and the arts to English literature and cultural studies, Puppik says.

Tobias Marmann, from Germany, is now employed fulltime at Google after doing a summer internship in Dublin in 2007.

All three men say that they have made friends quickly working at Google’s Dublin headquarters, because the international profile of the workforce makes it easy to slot in to a social network. Unlike an ordinary office, the Google campus, with its gym and restaurants, has the feel of a high-end university campus.

A further 50 interns from Ireland and Poland are also working at Google this summer with a view to securing jobs down the line. All the interns come through their universities in a programme organised by Helene McArdle.

How many graduates interview for a coveted place? “A lot. Too many to count,” she says. And they are paid, though Google won’t say how much.