C00kiemonster wrote:Internships....
Seemingly for some companies the best way to exploit kids fresh out of education. Our youngest is a clever kid and is now finished at Uni and looking for a job in London. She's applied for many jobs and they keep throwing the experience card at her (she's just out of uni FFS) so she's been doing some internships.
The process is the same - CV, go for interview, get offer. Some pay, most don't. She's done a couple now - a month at each. They are with reputable companies in the PR game. Both times she turns up - nothing for her to do. Maybe get some coffee for all of us? Maybe photocopy some stuff. It takes at least 2 weeks for each of the companies to get her doing anything vaguely relevant.
In the meantime it's costing her a fortune to travel each day and she's staying with different members of our family who luckily we have some of in London. She's now got an evening job in the pub as soon as she gets home each night, just to cover the travel expenses and being able to eat. She's knackered, stressed and skint.
Lucky her has been offered a paid internship at one company - we'll pay you £100 a month for travel. Wow thanks. It costs £50 a week to get there.
When did we get to a point in society where we don't help our young get jobs, aspire to owning their own house and have a comfortable life when they are clearly capable and can contribute greatly to society?
All that happens now when most kids get out of Uni is that they are told they will never own a house, there are no jobs unless your lucky, no training / apprentice opportunities in many fields and by the way - you owe the government £50k before you start.
She's determined and we will try and help
and breathe...........
The more i see of society the less i like these days (or am i an old man - probably.)
Sorry to hear this Cookie but she sounds determined and that alone is worth more than any travel expenses. These companies sound sh!t and from what I hear, all PR companies are like that - especially in London. People try and trip up other people because they want the bonus that month or because they want the promotion, this is something she will need to get used to if she wants to work in that industry. Mind you, once you get your foot in the door the pay is bloody brilliant. A colleague's friend works in PR in London and owns a BMW M235i aged 24.
All she can do is keep contacting companies, reading up about them, finding employees of the company on social media (Linked In?) and gauge how happy the work force is. Ring them rather than email them, make it a personal thing where they feel they are talking to a real person rather than an email. When I applied for my apprenticeship I found out exactly who I would be dealing with for the apprenticeship and contacted them directly, I asked for a tour around the site and asked if they had anymore literature that I could read through in my spare time to help find out about them.
Uni is far from what it's cracked up to be these days; most young people I work with have loads of debt, no experience but loads of knowledge (most of which they will never need). That said, all of these graduates get significantly better pay than I do currently and they also get the job title (hence pay) because they have the degree. There isn't much they do that I can't but there's a lot of stuff I have to help them with because they don't know what to do. <<<That's my little rant for the day.
I'm not sure if any of this will help you although I am sure she'll stick with it and make it pay in the long run
