Why Interns Should Be Paid

Recently, Glassdoor released an article on the highest paid interns in US, highlighting the bipolar and hotly contested debate on whether interns should be paid.

Having matched dozens of interns to companies over the past 6 months, I unabashedly take the side that interns should be paid (but not necessarily more than the average US household income).

Interns add value to your company

Interns are strategic resources for every company, regardless of size. Although they are here for a brief stint, these hungry, driven youths are an extra hand and leg for the company and the team.

What we realised was the difference between an intern and a part-time/temp job seeker. The former is passionate to build relevant career capital, where the invaluable experience trumps the allowance and the working hours. They are willing to give up a higher paying job (the hourly wage for a part-time/temp job seeker is typically twice that of an intern's hourly wage if you calculate allowance vs. hours worked).

Companies need to leverage on this hunger and dedication to nurture interns to value add to the team and their job scope, and because of this value add, they should be paid a gratuity allowance. No, not as a monetary reward, but a token of appreciation, a gesture of thoughtfulness. That the company cares about the intern enough to help defray living costs like meals and transport.

If they don't add value, you shouldn't be hiring them

And nothing kills the hunger and passion of an intern than a rote, mundane and no-value-add internship. Yes, you can get your interns to help you out with administrative tasks because that is inevitable many a time. But no, your intern should not be dedicating their entire internship to format Powerpoint presentations and enter data into spreadsheets, unless that was clearly indicated in the internship description.

If the intern does not add value to your company, or you do not foresee that happening, then you should not hire an intern. Try an outsourcing or temp staff solution. Interns are a misnomer for cheap labor. And because we are the connectors between companies and interns, we always attempt to filter out internships where interns are not expected to value add to the company.

Paying intern obliges both sides to value add to each other

Ultimately, paying an intern's allowance obliges both company and intern to value add to each other. Because the company has to pay the intern, they are motivated to nurture the intern to value add significantly to the company. It's almost like a buffet. You have paid a fixed price, and it's for you to get the most out of your money. And you do that by training your intern well. Because the intern is nurtured, they are inclined to apply what they have learnt (trust me, interns do want to contribute, except sometimes they don't know how to). It's a win-win situation.

How much should I pay my intern?

The million dollar question (ok, maybe less) whenever we share that we are an internship platform: How much should I pay my intern?

We do not set any hard-and-fast rules for companies hiring interns through us, and really, it depends on the nature of the job, the time commitment and the scarcity of skills. If you require a data scientist intern, you probably expect to pay above-the-market intern allowances because of the limited supply.

On average, our interns get paid SGD$600 - $1000 (USD$500 - $800) per month for a full-time internship position (yup, nothing close to those 25 companies listed above), but the bottom-line is to provide sustenance for the intern to cover basic living expenses (i.e. meals and transport). Given a city like Singapore where living costs are one of the highest worldwide, a stipend does go a long way to help interns take their mind off living costs and focus whole-heartedly.

What do you, as an employer, think? Should interns be paid?

Qin En is the co-founder of Glints, a platform for companies and interns to find each other based on skills and personality. Starting from a talent agency where the 3 co-founders matched each and every intern to an internship manually, Glints has grown beyond serving startup internships to include SMEs and MNCs. Recently, Puma, Goldlion and Line have signed up to recruit interns. Glints is also a JFDI-incubated company.