Whether interns should be paid or not is an ongoing question. The Department of Labor has some strict guidelines based on the Fair Labor Standards Act that employers must adhere to when they are considering hiring unpaid interns.
Career professionals recommend that students apply for internships where they feel they will get the best experience. This experience may be paid or unpaid. Be sure to check out all of the hype going on with this issue recently.
There are some fields such as nonprofits that just don't have the money to pay their interns. Nontheless, these internships can provide students with invaluable work experience that will work in their favor when applying to jobs after graduation.
Thank you for the great tips! I have so many internships under my belt and yet I am still an “Eternal Intern”. I got together with two girlfriends with similar internship woes and started a blog documenting our experiences (www.the-eternal-intern.blogspot.com). We are three well-educated, well-rounded young ladies with great resumes and we just can’t seem to catch a break! Every internship only seems to lead to another unpaid internship!
- Ophelia (www.the-eternal-intern.blogspot.com)