With JobBridge in the news again I couldn’t resist to clearly put myself in the ranks of those who are against it. Not like the Socialist Pary members like Paul Murphy MEP who writes JobBridge to nowhere! (I like the article!), but quite close to it. The internship scheme is a good idea and could work quite well if done right. The one we have today is very, very far from it. It is no surprise it is causing such all these troubles for the government, with the majority of people expressing themselves unusually vocally about it. And the majority of the votes are the NO votes for the national internship programme.
The internship programme could actually work well. If… If the rules are set right. Imagine that a company can ONLY get an intern if the intern will be doing exactly what the company specialises in, and if the intern will learn skills during the internship that will make him the very attractive hire for the same company he got an internship from? To put this in real life example the rules should look somewhat like this:
1. No internships for the jobs that are paid minimum wage (by that same company). Why? The government has a chance to get unemployed placed in the job and it should aim highest possible paid ones.
2. Internship can be offered where the work performed is one of the core skills of the company. A marketing company can have a marketing intern, not a web designer. A web design company can have a web designer as an intern, not a marketing person. Why? Simply because the internship is there for the intern to learn.
3. Strictly no receptionist, admin, PA, and similar internships.
4. A company must provide a Mentor for the intern. Such a mentor should prove he/she will dedicate 10% of the working time to the Intern for the training. A mentor must be a senior staff member (in years of experience) and have the skills relevant to the internship.
The internship should be exactly the same as the initial training a new hire gets in the first few months on the job. It would give the company an extended period to test and try the intern before they make a hire. A trained intern after 6 months of the internship should be a far more interesting hire than a new candidate since the company has already invested in the intern who is ready to start the work immediately (or has been doing it for the months already).
Wouldn’t this make far more sense than the Internship programme we have today?