Internship 2.0 - Abolish the internship-ery

Translated from Ralf Junge's blog post: "Wir schaffen das Praktikum ab"

Do German companies need or want interns?

Bild: Sean MacEntee 

Approximately nine years ago the generation internship came to life. Young professionals were literally ripped off. Working like an employee employed for years already but not receiving an appropriate salary, many even without any at all. And career perspectives - well those existed basically from internship to the next, as hardly ever. This created a great and grand outcry. Associated were founded, dealing with this very issue and demanding transparency of employment of each company. At some point politicians added their two cents to it also and created guidelines and contract samples. Considering everything so far one would think companies have learned from their mistakes, especially as the competition, or war, for talent became quite noticeable.

Yet, current studies and comments on employer rating portals show clearly there are companies still which literelly haven't done the change, be silent about noticing an issue present. Why don't we stop these long lasting (yeeeeears) and nerve-wracking discussion by abolishing the whole intership all itself !?!OR, we keep talking about the subject "work conditions of Young Professionals". Let's create a new internship model - Internship 2.0. Maybe, let's just institute a dissuasion department for bad companies and declare prohibitions and requirements for advertisment of internships.

December 2nd in Berlin's Axel-Springer-Hochhaus, the nationwide Day of Interns topics as above are discussed. The best employees for interns will be praised. So will the Interns of the Year be elected. Therefor you still can make suggestions right here www.tag-der-praktikanten.de. 

Ralf


Editor's Note:

It is about time actually!!! Especially in countries like the U.S. were situations like this and the following video keep occurring....