Mira Khoury, 20, a final-year student at Royal Holloway, University of London, is doing an internship with an international digital media agency. Except, instead of running around the office making tea, she is at home on her laptop, signing into her company email account to find out her work for the week. Khoury is one of a rising number of final-year students and graduates undertaking virtual internships.
She started working initially as an office-based intern with the digital marketing firm FabriQate in September last year having heard about the internship via the website Enternships.com (a site where graduates can sign up for internship placements with small businesses). After an informal phone interview she was invited into the office to begin the placement. When her three-week internship came to an end, she wanted to stay on, developing her skills.
"Being a virtual intern gives me flexibility around my studies; I couldn't maintain a full-time role like I did during the summer," Khoury says. "Now, I intern by checking my emails and seeing what projects they need help with, from emailing clients to working on PowerPoint presentations, and researching new projects."
With office resources scarce, businesses are beginning to embrace web tools, such as Skype and instant messaging, to seek out graduates willing to work for them from the comfort of their own homes. Those keen to build up work experience are in turn signing up for virtual internships, using their PCs and mobile phones to gain entry into the world of work.
Journalism graduate Yazmin Malcolm, 21, runs an intern blog called I Was Just Thinking. She works virtually, writing for online magazines: "I sought out virtual opportunities by replying to posts on [journalism newsmail] Gorkana and other media sites. Writing online is a great way to display my writing skills to potential employers."
Rajeeb Dey, Oxford graduate and founder of Enternships.com, believes that in the current jobs market, all experience is valuable.
"Graduates need to be innovative about how they gain experience," says Dey. "Also, thanks to the global economy, a company in India might want an intern in Britain to offer company support, which would be a great opportunity for a graduate."
Another benefit of this new trend is to make internships more accessible. As Becky Heath, chief executive of Internocracy – a social enterprise campaigning to improve internships – points out, virtual internships can be a useful way for graduates based outside London to pick up new skills.
"In the past, if you were a graduate in Liverpool or Manchester wanting to intern in London, you would have to find someone with a spare sofa," Heath says. "This is a practical alternative."
Virtual internships offer benefits for the employer too, such as cost-cutting on office space. Businessman Fabio de Bernardi has two remote interns working on social shopping site Wishpot.com. "We aren't in a position to employ staff, so I advertised for virtual interns who were self-starters, with an entrepreneurial spirit," he says.
De Bernardi oversees a graduate who is studying for a master's in marketing and sales based in India, as well as an undergraduate studying in Birmingham.
"I keep in touch with both the interns via a weekly catch up on Skype," he says. "With the range of online collaboration tools available, communication is very easy."
However, De Bernardi admits there are also benefits to having an intern in the office. "Explaining the procedures to one when he was office-based was a lot easier than doing it via a video conference," he says.
There are other reasons to be wary of virtual internships. Heather Collier, director of the National Council for Work Experience, fears the new trend could cause graduates to lose out. "They can learn bad habits because there is no one there to advise them. Also, how is the intern being reviewed or assessed if the boss isn't watching?"
The question of pay is another important factor, says Collier: "If graduates are taking on any type of internship, they should be paid the minimum wage. Virtual internships may be another excuse for employers not to pay."
Internship payment is still a grey area. A spokesman from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, says: "We encourage employers to pay a wage that reflects both the value of the intern's contribution and the level of training and support offered by the employer, but ultimately graduates will need to weigh up the potential benefits of an internship offer."
Rosy Rickett, one of the founders of website Interns Anonymous, is worried that employers will see virtual interns as "an opportunity not to spend money, rather than seeing the intern as an employee whose job satisfaction should be viewed as a valuable investment. Also, there can't be much chance of the intern learning new skills if they are sitting at home, isolated from the office working environment."
However, for Khoury, working virtually has been very successful: "It shows I'm a self-starter, focused and can apply myself even when I'm not in the office. It opens up a lot of doors and is a great learning experience."
