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photo: CHARLOTTE YARES (JED COHEN)
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Virtual Internships
By JONNELLE MARTE
Natalie Ann Roig completed a marketing internship last spring—while riding the bus, sitting on her parents’ couch and lounging at home in pajamas. The internship, in which she worked 15 hours a week researching and blogging about corporate workplace benefits, was virtual—she needed only a computer and Internet access. Ms. Roig, a senior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, never even met her boss, in Atlanta. “I didn’t have to dress up. I didn’t have to sit at a cubicle for hours,” says Ms. Roig, a senior studying graphic design. “It was more like work at your own pace and get the work done.” ‘THE WORLD IS OPEN’ Virtual internships, while relatively rare, are becoming more common, career experts say, fueled by improving technology and the growth of social media. They are most popular among small to midsize companies and online businesses. More than one-fourth of 150 internships posted on UrbanInterns.com, a site that connects small businesses with part-time workers, are labeled virtual, where the work typically involves researching, sales, marketing or social-media development. “They’ve gone from being almost unheard of to being something almost every college student has at least considered,” says Steven Rothberg, founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, a job board for students and recent graduates. Mr. Rothberg says virtual internships started out and are still most common in the information-technology and software-development industries. Other growth areas include the sales, marketing and social-media departments of companies across various industries. Interns and career counselors say virtual internships can allow prospective employees to more easily sample a wider variety of jobs, without having to relocate. “If you’re in a place where you don’t have a lot of internship opportunities, all of a sudden the world is open to you,” says Leslie Jensen-Inman, one of Ms. Roig’s graphic-design professors at Tennessee-Chattanooga, who encourages students to seek virtual internships. Princess Ojiaku, a graduate student in biology at North Carolina Central University, wants to work in science policy. Last July, she did a virtual internship with Scientists and Engineers for America in Washington, D.C. She learned about the internship on Twitter, where she was following updates for the group, which promotes awareness of science and technology issues to policy makers. As part of her internship, Ms. Ojiaku spent 15 minutes to an hour each night tracking news articles, ads and poll results for last year’s Virginia gubernatorial election, one of the elections the group was following. She posted updates on the group’s Web site, including YouTube videos, campaign ads and summaries of the candidates’ positions on science-related issues. Ms. Ojiaku, who is considering being a lawmaker or policy adviser, says the internship helped her learn about the legislative process and key players in Congress without the trip to Washington. But she acknowledges that the distance limited her view of how policy making works. Attending committee meetings or observing lawmakers’ daily routines would have given her a better sense of what it would be like to work in Washington, she says. ALL ALONE There are other drawbacks to virtual internships. Working remotely, virtual interns aren’t around other people, making it hard to build personal rapport or management skills. “Some people might want to be in an office so that they can feel like they’re in the thick of things,” says author Lisa Orrell. She has hired four virtual interns in the past two years to help maintain her MySpace and Facebook pages and to promote her book, “Millennials Incorporated.” As in traditional internships, interns are supposed to be paid or receive school credit for their work, as Ms. Roig did. “Labeling something as an internship is not an excuse to have free labor,” says Jay Zweig, an employment attorney in Phoenix. Career coaches and attorneys say interns, especially those who aren’t paid, should request detailed explanations of the hours and tasks they will be expected to complete. Interns should also make sure they will get feedback and mentoring.
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