Now, I'd like to talk to you about something that's near and dear to my professional heart.
The internship.
The internship for business students is a little bit different for internships for other
academic disciplines such as medicine and education.
Business internships are placement like these other areas that is.
The internship is very similar to employment in nature.
That is the employer typically wants to interview the potential intern and bring them on as
very similar to an employee.
But the difference there about the internship is, it's for limited period of time generally
and here's the important part that the employers and students need to understand about internships
because most employers misuse internships.
That is, they treat business school interns as part time employees or in some cases full
time employees.
Well, that's fine in one instance where the intern is paid.
If the intern is paid and they are an employee, then that's fine.
But, if the intern is not paid, the unpaid internship, in order to not run afoul of the
fair labor standards act and certain provisions of the internal revenue code, for tax and
payroll withholding purposes, they - and other roles as far as unemployment tax, federal
or state of employment tax and worker's compensation.
To not to run afoul of these rules, an intern should not be a replacement for an employee.
That is the internship should be strictly a learning experience.
Now, if it's a learning experience, that means it's a primary benefit to the student and
only an incidental benefit if any at all to the employers.
So it's more of a mentorship learning experience.
Rather than it's something that resembles employment.
The way it's misused by employers is like I said, they bring the internal and they treat
them like an employee.
They give them task and it really is to replace an employee.
But the internship is for a specified period of time.
With that being said, students who are treated like employees are basically a part time or
temporary employee that they can get rid of at will or keep but there's no expectation
or benefits and things like that.
The internship by its very nature serves and then credibly important human resources function
for employers to bring people in and see how they fit as I've said in a prior lecture.
Try it before you bite it type scenario.
Internships often lead to part time or full time employment.
Part time while the individual's doing school.
Full time employment thereafter.
To summarize, just remember this, that if an internship is paid, it's fine to use the
intern as an employee.
If the internship is not paid, then it needs to be simply a learning experience.
Generally, that means giving the intern a project of some sort where they can be supervised
and learn from it but the benefits to the employers are incidental.
Now, the rules are a little bit different from a non-profit than a full-profit corporation
because individuals can always donate their time to a non-profit.
The main distinction there is when you're interning for a non-profit that the employer,
the non-profit itself cannot exercise expensive control over your work hours.
That is, they cannot demand a level of contribution of time, or hours or things like that.
Now, they may set up pre-scheduled hours that says if you want to this, you have to come
in during these hours but that's necessary control.
That's just segmenting of time.
So anyway, remember that about the distinction there for paid versus unpaid internships and
the distinction there between full-profit and non-profit and the true nature of internship
as a learning experience and how can that be an important jumping off point for employers
and bringing on talented, new employees and it can be a great source of experience and
most importantly, connections for the students.
So taking together, an internship is a very valuable proposition but will dive into that
further in our next videos regarding obtaining an internship and their value.
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