Taking a chance

INTERNSHIPS: The pay’s not good. In fact, most of the time, there’s no pay at all. Still, for some laid-off American workers, being an unpaid intern for the summer is better than not working at all.

Internships have traditionally been a way for students to get job experience — and for companies to take advantage of youthful enthusiasm at very little cost. But as the US unemployment rate rises to 9.5 per cent, unemployed workers in their mid-20s to mid-30s are applying for internships. Such programmes allow them to increase their skills, make new contacts and avoid the loneliness and boredom of unemployment.

“It feels weird being an intern at my age after five years of working,” says Beki Gibney. But the 28-year-old, who was laid off from a visual-effects company in February, says her summer internship at Revel In , a multimedia production company in New York, keeps her active and gives her the chance to learn new skills. “I felt guilty and depressed just sitting at home looking for jobs that didn’t exist,” Gibney told The Wall Street Journal.

"I felt guilty and depressed just sitting at home," says Beki Gibney.

Gibney’s boss, Scott Newman, said her age was not a problem for the company, although he worried at first that she was overqualified for the 16-hour-weekly internship. “But she was really clear about redefining where she’s going and what she’s doing, so we were open-minded. We like to work with talented people, to mentor and help them, and it may be a platform for hiring them,” Newman says.

Melissa Pereira, 33, works 20 hours a week as an unpaid intern in marketing with Clean Edison , also in New York. The company offers advice and training for companies and individuals in green building practices. Pereira, who was laid off last autumn after eight years with Sun Microsystems, saw an ad on Craigslist.org for the internship. “I explained that I wanted to learn the green industry and see if it was something I’d want to commit to,” she says.

“It was helpful for us to get somebody of her calibre applying for one of our internships,” says Clean Edison’s president, Avia Yashchin.

As with any job application, it is important for older workers to explain their motivation, according to management psychologist Constance Dierickx of RHR International in Wood Dale, Illinois. “You need to talk early about the benefits of hiring you,” Dierickx says. “It works well to say that you’re looking to make a career change or to learn something new. It doesn’t work well to say ‘I lost my job and don’t have anything else to do’.”