Volunteering, Unpaid Internship: How to Choose your Employer?
A lot of young people are looking for new working opportunities to start their careers, they sometimes want to join volunteering positions and/or unpaid internships. These kinds of positions can make them learn, gain experiences, discover the professional world, and move forward in their professional adventure. However, young people need to be careful on how to choose their experience and the good employers for them.
Some organizations, companies, or individuals will use the energy, intelligence, passion, and motivation of students or newly graduated persons and sell them lies and illusions. They can tell them that they will learn, that they need them to build a new future and to be part of their success but this kind of employers will actually “manipulate” their minds and inexperience to serve their own interests (to grow, to find people who will help them for free to become bigger, for their own interests, etc.).
I made a small survey on my LinkedIn profile to ask people if youth would accept an unpaid internship or volunteering position, and I was surprised that the answer was 50% for “Yes” and 50% for “No”, and this according to my personal analysis due to the confusion and hesitation of people between “if I will need to be paid for my effort and at the same time learn”, or “if learning itself is an investment”. Young people want to learn they are passionate and most of them don’t do the right choice of their mentors, supervisors, employers. So how to choose your employer for this kind of unpaid positions?
As a volunteer or young person willing to work without getting paid, you must:
- Ask about the organization/enterprise/individual that you will work with. Unfortunately, online research is not enough and will not give you, most of the time, the truth of your future employers because today anyone can create a website, a brand, a social media channels, or an unreal activity and fake impact and publish fake achievements online. You have to ask at least 3 people who worked before with that organization or employers. Ask your 3 references questions about its impact, if you will learn from them or not, and if they only sell lies. It is important for you as a young person to protect your passion, your energy, your motivation, and intelligence, and to choose well the person/organization who will supervise you and teach you. Know how to choose your “mentor”.
- Make sure that the organization/person has references online, good rates, and it is real and not fake. Again, this is not enough, as much as you learn about your employer as much you protect yourself from scammers. Make sure that the pictures, the impact, and the activities are real.
- If you are already an unpaid intern or volunteer and you find yourself “used” and you are not learning, so run and immediately leave the job. When you do work, always keep writing proofs of the work you’ve done, because this kind of person can steal your work, take your effort, and put their name instead of your name. There is a lot of good organizations, a lot of good employers, and amazing companies that need your support and help and invest in you to make you learn from their experiences. Make sure that you can find better experiences. You must always be careful about people who manipulate you at work and take for free your effort.
- Watch out for manipulators and be aware of them. There are some manipulative persons who want to use intelligent people to help them succeeding and being in the picture for free. This kind of person could even emotionally use you and build a relationship with you to keep you working with him/her for free and will convince you that you are supporting him/her to build his/her dream. So be careful about toxic people and narcissists.
I wrote this article to raise awareness and tell you that you are valuable and needed in our society. Accept unpaid internships and volunteering positions, but always take information and ask about your employers before working with them.
You can find here some link that will help you:
9 Signs Someone is a Narcissist: https://www.lifehack.org/347040/aware-these-8-signs-manipulator
Good luck!
