11. Pros and cons

Speaking about advantages and disadvantages of an unpaid internship, we should firstly weight opportunity costs and benefits. If benefits outweigh opportunity costs, we can assume that unpaid internship is worth. Otherwise, we should find another way of getting experience. Anyway, I suppose that final decision is individual and depends on many circumstances.

Personally, I partly agree with both authors. As a beginner economist I can claim that people react on stimulus. It is evident that salaries really stimulate us to work. At the same time, when students or graduates don’t get salaries they realize that they don’t bear serious responsibility for their work, so they have reasons to postpone their duties or just don’t do them in a required way. Such situations occur because workers don’t get rewards for their efforts and have a possibility to change their job in future, so they don’t think about their reputation at that temporary job.  Moreover, graduates and students often have a desire to become independent as quickly as possible. So, it isn’t a good idea for them to work free, getting support from parents. Another point is that, still, there are paid vacancies which salaries increase opportunity costs of unpaid ones.

Nevertheless, unpaid internships give an incredibly useful and valuable experience of corporate work, time-management, organization and stress.  Additionally, such practice is a valuable line in a resume and makes you more competitive in a labor market. What is more, if you have an internship in a bid and perspective company, there is a possibility to get an offer from it of full-time paid job. So, it would we beneficial to be an unpaid intern there for some time. But the other side of the coin is that frequently no one is interested in your learning and improving, so for the first time it will be challenging to cope with all obligations and duties. Such conditions give you skills of self-development.

Frankly speaking, I had a small unpaid internship this summer. Of course, I gained a lot of experience from working in office and was glad to have such an opportunity to work. It was my free will but finally I realize that it would be better if I had been given even a small reward for my work. I am sure that in this case I would work with all responsibility, and the company wouldn’t lose a lot. Taking into account  all these reasoning, I would say by all means it is necessary to have some practice or intership in order to become successful in future.