How much would you pay for a 1-week internship with a Hedge fund- An internship position secured through bidding for an opportunity to work with your dream employer? This may sound strange to some, but if you have heard of Charitybuzz, you would not be so surprised.
The Internship’ trend may spread afterall, albeit for a wealthy Owen Wilson-Vince Vaughn duo who are able to bid their way into Google.
‘ A quick introduction to Charitybuzz – it is a NY-based company that auctions off Experiences with celebrities, internships, events, sports and fashion and gives the proceeds to Charity. It’s got it all – a big name, the buzz and the good. With the job market still shaky, a student who bids for an internship at a top firm and wins it, will have a chance to get his/her foot in the door and a coveted name on the Resume. And hey – you are doing this for charity (well, that would be their party line afterall), so spend without guilt!
Remember the $610,000 bid for coffee with Tim Cook or the $85,000 bid for a 12-week-long internship with Russell Simmons and Richard Branson or the one for an internship backstage with Beyonce’s styling team.…The current bids on the website are at $77000 for Lunch with Marissa Mayer (ends June 27), $6000 for Max Levchin(ending June 27) and internships with Martha Stewart Living and the Weinstein Company. Internship with a London-based Hedge fund estimated at a $1000 value ended recently, with the funding going to a UK charity.
While the number of internship auctions are not currently large enough on Charitybuzz to be competitive to traditional internships, this is a topic worth discussing. Afterall this is a company that had a windfall year during the peak of recession by engaging its 3 way business model.
Despite all the furor over unpaid internships, they are still a valuable way for a student to overcome the catch-22 situation of experience and job prospects(the much familiar no job without experience and no experience without job situation). While I do not think traditional interview based internships(paid or unpaid) would ever go out of existence(companies do need qualified people afterall), with this new ‘format’ of internships-connected-to-charity, ‘getting in’ would no longer based on someone’s qualifications or GPA.
Does it matter? I think, definitely yes! I concur that charity auctions are a great way for organizations to raise funds to support the nonprofits, however not applying a merit-based selection process and excluding the less affluent could be a dangerous path to take.
What do you think- Would this so-called ‘Paid’ Internship create visible ripples in the job market or die an unassuming death?
While I applaud this company for roping in entrepreneurs and celebrities and raising large amounts of funding for a number of non-profits performing important work in the community - Is expanding this model to auctioning internship opportunities a viable one?
Are companies really running out of ideas to raise funds that they now need to enter the student market to take advantage of economic disparities? It could be argued that utilizing family connections to secure a position at a top firm is not unheard of. However, does that justify formalizing a process based on work opportunity for the highest bidder? What are your thoughts?
Have you heard about the New York School of Finance? (nyschooloffinance.com) Direct IB/PE/HF training part time and part time unpaid internship with a boutique firm. I see how it's different, where you are talking about bidding for a high-end/brand-name opportunities and NYSF is pure breaking-the-ice to the industry. I could understand if elite firms charged an application fee. I'm actually surprised they don't! (probably due to some EOE law). Ex: A HF posts a position online on Monday morning, by Friday they have hundreds of applications to weed through. If they charged a fee to apply, they would get fewer and more serious applicants. Yes, this is what headhunters/staffers are paid for but if a firm does their own hiring, it could make sense.
If you don't think you'll get accepted to Harvard Business School, you don't pay the $250 application fee. But since applying for HF job out of undergrad is free... Why not?
Yeah, interesting article here and you raise some valid questions. We actually promote New York School of Finance here: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/finance-internships and I think for some people it is a good fit (pretty much those with $ but without connection or financial modeling knowledge), but for others it makes no sense.
If you can get an internship without paying for the training, obviously that's ideal (why we've been trying hard to bring better & more internships to the WSO job board), but for some (especially international students that have no way to network face to face when abroad) it can be one of the few ways to gain relevant experience that they can then talk about in subsequent interviews.
Paying for an internship? I thought the existence of unpaid internships was bad enough. Damn, what is the world coming to
Yeah, this is just wrong. I know it's tough out there but I'd imagine any hiring manager worth his salt would look down upon someone who "paid" to work...
This is no different than kids asking daddy's friend to hook them up with a job... Or paying for a college admissions coach. What's the big deal? lack of merit? That's been gone for a long time
Why limit this to just internships? Let's do this for full-time jobs too. Want to work at GS? I'm sure there are enough people willing and able to pay $1 million for their kid and nephew and grandson and ect. for an analyst gig there. What's the big deal? Lack of merit? That's been going on for a long time.
exactly, banks already do this. If your daddy is a CEO, you're pretty much guaranteed a spot.
Normal people have no way of paying their way into GS. Paying for a 1-week internships vs paying for a FT jobs is like virgin mobile vs. verizon.
^ This exact thing happens in aviation. Certain airlines charge several 10s of thousand dollars for a few hundred hours of 'line training', which has you acting as co-pilot on revenue generating flights. Of course historically airlines paid pilots for this stage of training but then some shrewd businessmen realised that there are enough morons who are willing to pay to skip the queue and take work off paid employees in the process.
I see this as a classic supply and demand problem, ethics aside. When supply of (internship) labor exceeds demand even at price = zero, people start paying to work for you. (I see similarities with electricity in the utility space, where prices can sometimes go negative) Ethically, its a whole other debate, but It seems like unpaid internships no longer serve as the price floor.
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