Taking an unpaid internship

runswimyoga
Fri, 19 May 2017 20:28:22 +0000

From what you have told us, Im in the camp that this company is not complying with federal labor laws here in offering this unpaid internship to you.

From my understanding of the laws (understanding gained from listening to an NPR segment about gov cracking down on companies trying to use college students for free labor), unpaid internships have to be provable mentorships where they already have someone in the job and that person is teaching you the job- a kind of job shadowing if you will- but the paid employee does most of the work. The company cannot receive any kind of substantial or immediate benefit from your work. On NPR they also said they can’t send you out to get coffee or run errands for the company bc that would be an immediate benefit from your work

You wrote the position was “to help them out with social media marketing”- that sounds like they would benefit immediately from your work…

and it kind of sounds like a scam to me… also its obvi going to involve you promoting alcohol, which, as an underage person, doesn’t seem super ethical (esp in this age where your social media posts can come back to haunt you later in your career)… IMO, if you want to be an accountant, I wouldn’t compromise your ethics for this.