COVID-19 has caused real disruptions among businesses. But this had started to impact the way companies employ interns. According to an ET report, many first-year MBA students across IIMs and other B-schools have taken to professional networking site LinkedIn to raise a concern about companies revoking internships.
The decision of various companies is driven by the fear of economic uncertainty due to COVID-19. So, many companies are unwilling to offer paid internships or hold any internship programmes.
And many educational institutions offering MBAs usually offer credit for internships or have made internship mandatory.
Due to these criteria, many students end up taking up whatever is available in the market, which may hurt students’ future opportunities.
There are times students are exploited too. “People are trying to exploit us for work we do as an intern,” said a 25-year-old who took to LinkedIn to find an internship after his offer was withdrawn.
In addition, many companies wait till the end to inform the students of their decision to revoke an internship. This last minute act leaves students with less time to hunt for a new programme and also reduces their time to intern with another company.
Many students, who depend on the internship for monetary gain as well feel this to hurt their plans especially students with loans. Students pointed out companies want interns from IIMs and other renowned B-schools but they do not want to compensate them.
Start-ups in the market are shying away from employing interns. These professionals fear that they will have to spend more time teaching these interns at the time when businesses are hit. During hit times, companies would prefer someone more experienced who can extend an helping hand.
Then, there are other companies like e-commerce content startup Mason that had to pull back summer internship offers after the team leads were infected with COVID-19. Meanwhile, many companies felt communicating with interns from work from home made the whole process complex.
Meanwhile, the overall job situation in the country is not very appealing. The second wave of COVID-19 and the resultant localised lockdowns have impacted over 75 lakh jobs, taking the unemployment rate to a four-month high of 8 per cent, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said on Monday. This shows that unemployment is cause of concern for many.
