Paying Interns

After spending an entire summer in New York City, working 45+ hours per week and getting paid $10 per day, I feel pretty strongly about the need to pay interns. I realize that interns are a great way to get incredibly cheap labor at the cost of less experienced work, but it is incredibly difficult to motivate yourself when you know that you are working for approximately $1.11 per hour.
Once this summer, I was even in charge of recruiting a student from a film school to shoot a video for us. It was stressed to me that I was to make sure that the students being interviewed were well aware that they were not going to be paid. I loved that job -- grrr...
I can understand the fact that there are a lot of people out there looking for experience and I know that if I refuse to take an internship because it isn't paid, they won't care because it is likely that they can find someone else that will work for nothing, but I just feel that it is an unfair way to get cheap labor. At my internship this summer I felt like I was frequently doing jobs that the regular employees do, yet getting paid next to nothing while they brought in a salary.
I'm not asking for millions... I would be happy with minimum wage!

my amazing discovery

Going on with my recent obsession with job hunting, I started wondering what I can be expecting to make when I find my first job. I have these amazing visions about what it will be like to have a steady paycheck that gives me more than what I'm getting at my $6 an hour internship (oh what we'll do for experience). But my problem was that I wasn't sure what I should even ask for as my salary. I noticed that several of the employers of the jobs that I was looking at want you to give them what you want for a salary. In this there is quite the predicament - you ballpark a figure that is too low, you sell yourself short and settle for less than you could be getting OR you overestimate and the potential employer throws out your resume. Pretty intense stuff. So anyway, I was curious so I checked out the usual salary.com and it wasn't much of a help. I wanted to see something specifically entry level, but it was giving you a general idea. So, I googled "salary for entry level PR" and guess what I found... an entire site devoted to soon-to-be college grads looking for advice and jobs. The site is www.entrylevel-pr.com. I originally found the blog first, and it had really great topics and advice, but this is the main site. I still need to keep looking around, but it seems to be a pretty helpful place for someone like me. I know the blog was written by a woman who was working in PR (maybe in HR) and was in charge of hiring people. So she knows what she is talking about when saying what they look for on resumes and things like that.
So, this is my latest discovery and I hope that someone else can benefit from it as well :) Happy job hunting!

On the job hunt...

So once again, I'm posting about the job hunt. I can't help it - even though I don't graduate for another 8 months or so, I feel the need to search site after site looking for a potential job. I change my mind once every two weeks or so though, so maybe within the next two posts I'll have a different life goal!
But for right now here is what I'm thinking: Big city (okay, no difference there) working at a PR agency. I'm thinking agency right now mostly because I really don't know what I want to do. My thoughts are that if I work for a PR agency I can get a broad idea of PR. Plus I think that there are positives about working at a large, established firm. One of the other obstacles I have run into is the simple fact that a lot of places aren't looking for an immediate post-grad. Almost everything that I run into is for 3-5 years experience and let's be real - that isn't me. And to be honest, I'm a little scared of the real world and the idea of being thrown into a job that I have no idea what I'm doing is daunting. Working at a large firm, I would probably start out with a paid internship and after three months or so, hopefully be promoted to a Jr. Account Exec. I'm confident that I can work my way up so right now this is looking pretty good.
I already spoke to someone at Edelman about applying for an internship for after graduation in Portland, OR, so I'm feeling pretty good. I just hope everything works out. Real world here I come... well that may have been slightly premature... real world here I come in eight months. Okay, much better.