10 Signs Your Summer Internship Isn't Going to Get You Anywhere

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No matter how many wonderful contacts you gain at your internship, if you aren't building a skill set, you won't be employable. Don't get us wrong, you are going to have to do some bitch work, but if your day begins and ends at the filing cabinet, then it's time to reconsider the situation. Janitor, courier, caterer: these are all good jobs that command a decent paycheck. They are not the responsibility of a college junior who is a natural with the Febreze bottle. You're going to be taken advantage of enough in your life in exchange for a paycheck: don't let a company sucker you into a parasitic situation in exchange for transportation costs and a pat on the back.

It is going to be hard for you to leverage a network of unemployed people. There is a downside to the dynamic, ever-changing economic landscape created by the Internet: Lots of companies are going out of business. One classic desperate move at failing companies is to bring on interns to do the work that used to be done by paid, trained employees. If you aren't being paid, there is no reason to go down with the ship. Even if you forge a meaningful connection with staff members as you all go down together, they are going to be tied up for the next several months getting new jobs. Add in the time it takes for them to be in a position to recommend someone for a hire, and you are likely a year away from gaining meaningful contacts from a failing firm. If you are learning something, then by all means fight through the last days, just don't expect a speedy response from references who are busy staving off the soup line.

Newspapers have been the old media whipping boys for years now, but there are a number of industries that are either dying out or changing rapidly. Film, publishing, journalism, and advertising are just a handful of fields that have been altered radically over the last decade and will likely continue to change for some time. It might feel great to get an internship where you edit actual film on a traditional editing bay or spend your days bookbinding, but your boss might be the last person in human history to be paid to do it. Before you jump into your internship, try to take a look at the state of the industry and see how your prospective gig fits in. It may be the case that your internship better prepares your for the job of museum curator or historian than for actually working in your field.

If you see your boss less often than the angels saw Charlie, then you have a problem. While the idea of the enigmatic, jet-setting boss is romantic, it isn't helpful for you. Ideally, you and your supervisor have worked out a plan. You discuss your progress regularly and set goals. This might seem like wishful internship thinking, but it shouldn't. An employer is allowed free labor in exchange for meaningful work experience. It is hard to create a meaningful experience without oversight. If you find yourself toiling away on spreadsheets in a room by yourself, make some noise. If no one listens, then it might be time to make your exit. Don't worry about this hurting you in the long term: no one in the office ever bothered to learn your name anyway, so they won't be able to drag it through the mud.

Contacts are the currency of any internship. If you aren't making meaningful connections, then the internship probably isn't worth your time. You might be a natural at the job. Hell, you might be better than many of the people on staff. None of that matters if the people you are working under don't like you. The only way a prospective employer can verify your experience is through references. If you can't come away from your summer indenture with at least one person who will give you that glowing seal of approval, then you have nothing. Of course, you could be the problem. So, first try changing your behavior, and if that doesn't work, it might be time to make some money before you head back to school.

A common move by well-known figures in a field is to pitch an "internship" that is really just an unpaid personal assistant job. The horror stories resulting from this practice have been well documented, but that doesn't mean they haven't continued.  Before you get too elated that your favorite Pulitzer Prize winning author or rock star photographer has opted to bring you on as an intern, consider the situation. If you are working for only one person, you aren't going to meet many meaningful contacts in your field. Though you may be their assistant in the studio, when you accompany them on gigs, whether it be a concert or a shoot, you won't have anything to do except remain at their beck and call. There have been stories of unpaid assistants launching their careers under benevolent mentors, but there are far more stories of bright-eyed co-eds frittering away a year picking up dry cleaning and enduring sexual harassment to end up right back where they started.

Most ambitious people love nothing more than a healthy dose of competition. Working with a few other interns can drive your will to succeed and provide you with some great lifelong contacts. At the very least, you'll have people to suffer in the trenches with you. If there are more interns than chairs in the break room, however, that's a red flag. An ethical company will only hire as many interns as they can provide meaningful career experiences. If there are more than a few interns buzzing around the office, the powers that be might be looking for free labor or sexy office scenery more than they are cultivating apprentices and proteges. Even if the company is on the up and up, ask yourself if an environment where you come in everyday and fight with a dozen other hungry novices for meaningful work experience is going to help you reach your long term goals. We've all heard of too many cooks in the kitchen; there is also such a thing as too many interns in an office.

Sometimes you need to take an internship just to learn that how your field operates. Many industries rely on freelance labor that takes place off site, meaning that you might not actually meet anyone who does the work you want to be doing at your internship. Let's dig into film as an example: interns usually fill the role of "production assistant," a general office or set worker. If you want to get involved in a specific department, such as camera or production design, you'll have to connect with those departments just to get an internship under them. As each department is hired on a project by project basis, simply working for the production company may not provide you the opportunity to meet the people you have to meet in order to get those positions. For similar reasons, it is totally possible to work for a publishing company and never meet any writers, or work at an art gallery and never connect with any artists. This probably isn't an appealing prospect for your savings account, but you might have to take an internship just to figure out the proper internship for you.

It is quite possible that you will hate your internship. Worse still, you may find that you hate the job you've spent years training to do. That's okay. One of the most ridiculous aspects of humanity is that our 18 year-old selves make choices that effect us for the rest of our lives. Just because you enjoyed working on the yearbook staff back in high school doesn't necessarily mean that a career in journalism is right for you. One of the most important things you can discover during an internship is that you and your chosen field just aren't going to work out. If after a couple months, you find that your vocation isn't what you thought it was, then it'S time to consider a change. Get out of that office and back to the drawing board.

"The most important thing I can teach you is to never screw up a coffee order." This was the advice I left my first internship with. Now that we have listed all of these potential pitfalls of unpaid labor, it bears mentioning that interning is about doing bitch work. You will be loading trucks, getting coffee, and crafting boring emails. That's because every job is boring, and your boss didn't get into the field to let interns do all of the fun stuff that they have slaved away for decades to finally be able to do.

Just because you spend a few mornings stuffing envelopes or watering plants doesn't mean that the internship is all for naught. The best gauge of time well spent is if you feel like you are learning how the business works. Do you have a better sense of the your dream job description? Great. Do you see how to get better at the real ins and outs of your desired career? Even better. Are you making connections that will help you land the a paying gig down the road? You've found the holy grail. Don't get us wrong: your internship isn't supposed to be fun and life isn't fair. You just need to make sure that your sweat equity is moving you forward, even if it is only baby step by baby step.