SYP Event: Your Rights As An Intern

Posted on June 18, 2013 in Uncategorized

On Thursday 13 June, the SYP met to discuss the rights of interns and the role of internships and work experience in helping people to break into the publishing industry. We had a fantastic panel of speakers made up of Suzanne Collier (founder of BookCareers); Ellie Pike (HR advisor at Penguin); Julie Hadwin (Publishing Partnerships Manager at Creative Skillset) and Tabz O’Brien-Butcher (NUS Executive and Woman’s Officer for Manchester Students Union). The speakers agreed on the importance of recruiting as widely as possible for entry level publishing roles and on the potentially negative effective of long term unpaid internships. They all considered industry wide standards and guidelines on publishing internships and work placements to be necessary and felt that any candidate working long term and performing the function of a ‘worker’ must be paid at least the minimum wage.

Our panel from left to right: Tabz O’Brien-Butcher, Ellie Pike, Suzanne Collier and Julie Hadwin

Julie Hadwin began the evening by explaining that Creative Skillset was a body that represents a number of creative industries and that part of her job was to ensure that there was a proper dialogue between education and training for publishing. She mentioned that the current economic conditions publishers are facing are making it essential for them to invest in workforce development. She also pointed to upcoming research by Creative Skillset on the economic benefits of paying interns and suggested their guidelines for employers as a fair way of opening access into the industry.

Tabz O’Brien-Butcher spoke passionately about how she believed that long term unpaid internships perpetuated social inequality and because most of these opportunities are in London they also strengthen the North/South divide. She stated that the NUS considered such roles exploitative and were concerned that they were undermining the provisions of the National Minimum Wage as well as depressing starting salaries. There is a real issue, she feels, around the phenomena of people doing continual internships that may not lead to jobs and that this priced many talented people out of the jobs market.

Ellie Pike mentioned the proactive approach that Penguin is taking towards improving access into publishing with their ten-week long summer paid internships. She reassured the audience that HR are strict on the managers that take on interns within their departments. She said that the two week work experience placements that Penguin offers were very much a learning experience and that by contrast, an internship is similar to a job with a description and a more formal selection process. Her top tips for making a good impression as an intern were to show initiative; ask good questions and keep in touch with people after the placement is over.

Suzanne Collier then argued that candidates should do internships and work experience for as little time as possible and that paid office experience outside of the industry can be just as valuable. She confirmed that job adverts are best viewed as wish lists, and that if you see a job you feel qualified for you shouldn’t be shy in applying for it! When asked if interning was a necessary rite of passage in publishing she suggested that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy and urged people to remember that the whole purpose was to get that paid job.

The consensus of our speakers was that any candidate who is not a student; who is working long term, without pay or for expenses only; whose work is not primarily educational and who is providing real value to the company is being exploited and they are urged to speak to their employer or one of the aforementioned industry bodies.

Overall it was a very enjoyable and interesting evening, and everybody agreed that there is a real desire within publishing to see more diversity in the workforce, and that this starts with protecting the rights of interns. I would like to say thank you to our speakers and audience members, on behalf of the SYP committee, for making it such a success.

Anna Cunnane