Interns

[Richard]

Just putting out a notice here for all of you who are businesses and might be interested in getting some free labor to help you out.

Due to reforms in the US internships have changed somewhat. These days to be a genuine internship either an intern needs to be paid a token amount, needs to get credits from their school, or needs a combination of the two. For most webcomic businesses the best route to go would be credits. That way both parties get something out of the deal. Usually the intern gets credit for an entire class and you get the benefit of an employee who wants to do well to get a good grade.

Your first and best bets are to go to local universities and contact their career centers. From their declare your intent on getting interns (remember to already have in mind which majors you wish them to be pursuing) and ask them the steps businesses need to take to get them. Keep in mind most internships begin and end with the school's semester schedule, so finding interns in the middle of a semester would be hard.

Once you get the guidelines for your particular universities you'll find out several of them exclude your business. If you have a home office some universities will dismiss you out of hand. Some will want you to have a certain amount of people already working for your business before you have interns. It is at this point you'll have to decide which universities you'll be pursuing.

At this point you should ask your contact in the career center(s) of your choice for an example proposal from a business that had been approved before. This will give you a guide to writing your proposal. After this step you should be able to sit back and relax, waiting to see if your proposal has been accepted by the university.

I'll go into more details later if anyone wants.

Cheers!

[Rob]

Yay Richard is back!

Also, many high schools have what they call "School to Career" programs that are very well defined and can be relatively cheap if you need cheap labor. We used them at my last job.

But Richard is right internships have changed a lot as of late.

[Alectric]

What exactly does it mean for an internship to be "genuine"?  I always thought of an internship as anything that provides specialized work experience and can be put on a resume.

[Richard]

Well, over the past couple of years new legislation has been put through putting in some strict guidelines for interns to help prevent exploitation of interns and to prevent people from using interns in lieu of full time workers.

Pretty much at this point to be a "genuine" internship you need to either get paid, get credit, or a combination of the two. Anything else is more like volunteer work.