It started in October last year when I discovered my passion for writing. Hence, I decided to do a content writing internship to gain experience and knowledge about it.
After a month of looking for internships, I was selected for a content writing and digital marketing internship through a well-known internship aggregator (IA) at a seemingly legit internet media platform. I was pretty excited as this was going to be my first internship.
However, after a day of joining, I was informed that even though the internship had been listed as a ‘paid internship’, the company would only give me a certificate. I wasn’t happy about it – but since there are a lot of unpaid internships, I decided to go ahead with it for the work experience. As the days passed, the moderator handling the interns started messaging and calling me up at odd hours asking me to write extra PR articles for certain individuals.
The shocker came after two months, after my internship ended. The moderator started making a fuss over giving me a certificate. After several follow-ups, the person sent me an image of the certificate over WhatsApp which had no authenticity. All the information about my internship was also false!
I decided to take the matter up with the IA through whom I had joined the platform, and informed them about the issues. To my surprise, the company authorities wrote to the IA saying that I was the one who had deceived them over the issue of money – as a result of which they didn’t provide me with a proper certificate.
This was really disappointing for me because the IA also started believing the company. I issued a prompt response to the IA, but didn’t receive any response to my mail for three months. It was only after I wrote an email marking the CEO of the IA that my case was heard. Action was taken against the fraudulent internet media company – and I finally received an authentic certificate!
It was a really bad experience – and this has made it hard for me to trust any kind of internship, paid or unpaid. What was supposed to be a 2-month internship ended up as a 6-month struggle for to get my case heard and have a legit proof of my internship! It is really sad to see that even big IAs don’t perform a proper screening of the companies before listing them on their platforms. As a result, this experience has made me hate the thing I was really passionate about!
I don’t know how many talented youngsters have been exploited by such companies in the name of internships. The truth is that these companies generate revenue from the content they generate from their interns – while the interns only have a bad experience!
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Image used for representative purposes only.