An article in the Evening Standard yesterday accused London’s leading museums and art galleries of exploiting interns who work for no pay up to nine months at a time!

The article mentioned museums such as The National Gallery, Natural History Museum, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery who are being criticised for hiring unpaid interns.  Critics said the benefits of internships were being ‘abused by employers’ adding there is no way students can afford to live and work without being paid a wage.

Labour MP Luciana Berger carried out research on this hot topic and found the  National Gallery had nine unpaid interns working for between three weeks and nine months at a time over a year-long period ending last September.

What do you think about this?!! Exploiting students on unpaid work placements and internships is completely against our beliefs and employers need to realise this…Work experience is key, especially is this climate of graduate unemployability – the highest in over 10 years according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).  There are several paid placements and internships which you can do, just look on www.ratemyplacement.co.uk for inspiration.

We would love to hear your thoughts on whether you have taken an unpaid placement and internship…we believe that employers should not exploit students and as MP Berger sums up, “nine months unpaid is exploitation, not experience.”

Please add you comments below

The RateMyPlacement team

At RateMyPlacement.co.uk, we pride ourselves at knowing how 1st & 2nd year students think and what better way than keeping up to speed than surveying our target market.

In December 2010, On-CampusPromotions.co.uk, the new on-campus engagement arm of RateMyPlacement.co.uk, surveyed 1,209 1st & 2nd year students gaining their opinions on everything from fairs attended, media habits to their career influences. Respondents were from 51 different institutions and were made up by an even spread of 1st & 2nd years and males & females.

The results of the survey were announced in part one of a 2 part session by the On-Campus Promotions team at the recent National Placement & Internship Awards. The second part of the presentation saw the invitees given an insight into how to engage with students from our panel of 6 Brand Managers & Society Presidents.

As we see more of a shift towards recruiters engaging with students at a younger age, there is even more need to gauge the opinions of undergraduates, an area which we have found many student surveys ignore. The highlights of the survey are shown below:

• 84.8% of the 1st & 2nd year respondents had attended a Freshers Fair compared to 54.7% who had attended a Careers Fair. Only 40.5% of respondents had visited the careers service.
• When we break this down by year group only 39.5% of 1st years had attended a Careers Fair and 22.5% of 1st years had been to the careers service.
• 71.6% of respondents were a member of societies with an average 2.54 societies each.
• The most useful when searching for a career was the University Careers Website (93.7% voted very / quite useful) and the least were Social Networks (38.4%)
• The most influential when making career related decisions was Careers Advisors (80.5% voted high / moderate influence) compared to the lowest Student / Friends (59.5%).
• For 1st years, Relatives & Recent Interns were the most influential alongside relatives with experience.
• 96.6% of our users were on Facebook and 24.6% were on Twitter
• 58.0% of respondents would never interact with recruiters on Facebook and 41.6% would be uncomfortable or very uncomfortable combining a social media presence with job hunting.
• 77% of students went to University to improve their career prospects and 90% plan to get work experience before graduating.
• Despite the above only 28% are aware of work experience opportunities for 1st years and 30% know what they want to do after graduating.

For full details of the Survey Responses and to read about the insights from our panellists, click on the button below and download the results in full:

As always, we would love to hear from you, so tell us your thoughts below…

The video of the 2011 National Placement & Internship Awards is here!

The awards, held at Cass Business School on Thursday 20th January, recognised the outstanding achievements of employers, universities and students. With over 200 attendees from the world of graduate recruitment, higher education as well as talented students from the top universities, the event was a huge success.

Take a look at the Video below to see just how good they were! A special thanks goes to the guys at Career Player, it’s a great reflection of the day!

With 14 Awards in total across all stakeholders, the Awards were presented to those who have demonstrated their outstanding achievements in the world of placements and internships…

Click on the button below to find out who took home the Awards…

It’s an exciting time as many of you people on placement break the half way stage. Our Guest Blogger at CSC, David Galbraith updates us with his experiences so far…

“6:30am: I’ve woken to get into the office for 8. Unfortunately this is one of the 90% of the time I will ‘regretfully’ change my alarm to 7:00 and take the later train. Sometimes I’ll be sleepy and mistakenly change the clock on my phone instead of the alarm; resulting in being as late as I am tired.

7:30am: I’m praying for a stray copy of CITY AM, but as always, disappointed to get the metro. I get into work around 8.30.

9:00am: Roll into the office, picking up breakfast on the way (great canteen at HQ). I’m updated on e-mails so crack into the redesigning of a spreadsheet workbook for a monthly metrics report to be presented on client site. Could be a big deal and lots of saved hours If I can implement a straight through process for the data entry.

11:00: Am a little fed up now with cell merging and alignment nuisances so I use this opportunity to chase up a work shadowing opportunity with the UK Sales Director. I’m just after completing my last shadowing within Human Resources, which involved sitting behind the scenes on an assessment centre and constructing a report suggesting ways to improve the Assessment and recruitment process.

12pm: Early lunch to miss the queues. Heading down to meet with the other interns and a couple of the graduates. Gamon again. My plate is (again) hidden under a mound of spuds. Conversation is of the utmost quality as it quickly mutates from (the days) work into topical banter regarding the Irish famine, Dawei Wang’s hair (See picture) and of course planning the next night out.

13pm: Lunch done. Ate too much so drowsy now. Preparing a plan for a job that we will be orchestrating across the water (which will now be made harder as a result of my overfeed). I’m running an audit alongside the work, which is a hefty job, so requires accurate planning. Problem being confusion concerning the task direction, which seems to change every week.

15pm: Catch up with a team member to discuss progress on another of my tasks, to complete a retrospective audit on some assets. This is a very ambiguous task of recording all asset details of all-of-some software items. I suggest we meet with a project manager who dealt with the items previously. Another day please…

16pm: I’m in control of my work so leave early. I prefer to keep things at extremes. Either I’m one of the first to leave or the last. I don’t appreciate wasted time in the office when the work is under control and I understand how effective a long night of work in the office can be in getting a critical piece of work perfected. I keep my messenger and email on my Curve 24/7 so I’m never out of communication.

17pm: Cue discussion of which bar to visit on the way home with the other interns. This is a very dangerous idea but ALWAYS a good one at the time.

Well there it is. I think it’s important to clear the mist from the ambiguous ‘business’ placement role title and offer an insight into what actually happens day to day.

Overall and otherwise, things are looking well. I have applications rolling for summer placements, and CSC is looking quite good  concerning a post-university graduate programme. I picked up a Recognition Award last month and have just been assigned to a new project. Seems cool. Will update again soon.

Good Luck in your applications!”

You can find out more from David, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at CSC?

It’s an exciting time as many of you people on placement break the half way stage. Our Guest Bloggers at TUI UK update us with their experiences so far…

“As this is our first blog of the year, let us start by wishing you all a Happy New Year.

It’s certainly been a hectic start to the year for staff at TUI as we saw how the severe snow had such an impact on sales and our customers. The trading team have been working hard as January is their busiest month. The product team have completed strategic planning and research for the summer 2012 programme. And there is never a dull day in the cruise department – with new itineraries to plan for the April edition brochure and trading targets to meet.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the placement students took a trip to Southampton to visit the Thomson Dream before it left for its transatlantic journey to the Caribbean. We had a tour around the newest ship to the Thomson fleet and got treated to lunch and cocktails – it was a really good day! We tried to stay on board and head to the Caribbean but unfortunately we just had to make do with Southampton! For many of us, it was our first time on a cruise liner and a few of us are already planning future cruise holidays.

Two of the placement students, Jac and Dec, had a fantastic opportunity to go to Aswan in Egypt with the chance to experience one of our products in the form of a Nile Cruise. While on board they had the chance to speak to customers and get feedback from the rep. It was an eye opener for them, to see how things could be improved as well as seeing things that are being done well. While on the trip they had the opportunity to visit the famous Abu Simbel temples and haggle in the markets of Luxor all in the space of 3 days!

Last weekend all of the placement students took part in the National Back to the Floor day where over 200 head office staff had the chance to return to retail and experience customer enquiries and bookings first-hand. We all returned to our home towns and really valued the experience as it reminded us how excited customers get about booking their holidays and the how important our roles are in contributing to their experience.

As you may all be aware, we are currently in the process of recruiting for next year’s placement students. We’ve helped out on the Assessment Days by running an ice-breaker exercise. It’s unbelievable how time flies as this time last year we were doing the same exercises and it only feels like yesterday! We would just like to wish all applicants good luck and say congratulations to those who have already secured a position – we know you’ll have a great year!

Coming up we’ve got more things to look forward to. We will soon be having our second commercial update (details of which are found in the first blog). Many of us are taking advantage of the great travel opportunities we have here and some of us are spending time in different departments to experience other sides of the business.”

You can find out more from TUI UK, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at TUI UK?