Tuesday, August 18, 2009

If only everyone loved interns as much as the media does


Somehow I ended up in the New York Times. I tweeted the article about unpaid interns on Saturday and received gobs of support from the NY intern crew. Then on Monday the article made its way through the COLABORATORY circle-- funny how Twitter dies on Sundays.

To my surprise, I woke up to a facebook message from Peter Doocy of FOX news requesting an interview for a segment on “young people in the recession”. Despite my facebook name being “Paige” and my photo being a Photoshop hack job of my face pasted on body that is clearly not mine, Doocy still found me.

I’m not sure if normal people care about interns, but the media sure seems to.

The media loves to talk about how college graduates can’t get jobs and have to sleep on floors, but what they’ve failed to pick up on is the power of the underground intern network, a force that I don’t think even we interns have taken advantage of.

For example, I was only able to come to New York because a fellow University of Oregon Ad Kid, agreed to join forces with me and share a room. I receive emails and texts with possible job leads from fellow grads in New York, Texas and Oregon. And my POKE peeps are more than eager to drop names of agency folks I should chat with. My roommate and I have even let other interns crash in our room while visiting the city for job interviews.

And I’m just one little intern with a tiny contact circle; there are millions more of us out there. What if we could ban together? Interns secret insiders; we know when agencies are hiring, when Creative Directors are in bad moods, and an insight to agency culture.

You might think it’s odd that interns are eager to help other interns when we are all competing for the same jobs. But the way I see it, the more people I know with jobs, the more likely I am to hear about new ones.

4 comments:

Ashly Stewart said...

Wonderful idea! I just recommended Alex to WK NYC... They wanted an account person. I might die in that role, but he might be awesome at it. Chance are, if he is... they will remember me and like that I didn't tell them I would do something that would make me sad. I also think it's about getting the right people in the right positions.

Thanks for letting me crash on your floor.

word.

megan pants said...

Anytime. I love company.

Anonymous said...

The Underground Intern Network (UIN)? It’s already happening: distributed, loosely connected and vaguely aware of each other’s presence—haunting empty desks and half-filled coffee pots of agencies across the world.

But seriously, about the network thing. It’s quite powerful. It’s almost as if the strength of it doesn’t come from the nodes (ie. every intern) but the intra and inter-connection between the nodes (ie. interns who knows interns who knows interns who knows an art director.)

Anonymous said...

Yes, totally agree with this all! It's amazing how supportive everyone in our underground circle is - I love it!! (and know I will continue to send you emails about Austin things until I see your face down here (-; ) Good luck with the interviews, make sure to tell us about them, can't wait! (and p.s. can we pllllease make a video soon!?!!!)