Our company has 10 commandments in our business plan.  It’s slowly been growing, not it’s 18 commandments, but we stick to all of them.  Commandment #8 “An internship is education.  There are two kinds of internships: educational internships and exploitative internships.  We don’t do the second kind.”

Here’s why – from the Korea Times:

While internship is a good opportunity for prospective employees to gain real job experience and companies use it to discover promising talents, most companies use interns to do chores or make them bored by neglecting them, eventually pushing frustrated interns to quit prematurely, Maeil Business News reported Saturday.

A large number of companies have been recruiting interns this year in support of the government’s effort to create more employment opportunities amid the economic contraction. Yet, companies don’t know what to do with them as they lack a specific plan to use them by providing them with meaningful work experiences.

The financial sector this year, for example, plans to recruit 5,000 interns. But only a few weeks into the work, a considerable number of them have already left their work site. For instance, “C” bank selected 500 interns early this month. Now, 100 of them left. Kookmin Bank recruited 650 interns, but 50 of them also left.

“All day long, I practically don’t do anything,” said an intern, identified as a 24-year-old Woo, a recent honors graduate of college. “I got three finance-related certificates, but what I mainly do at the bank is mostly copying papers,” She said. Despite her dissatisfaction, she said she keeps her internship because she cannot find a proper job at the moment.

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