Employer rejects unpaid internship applicant for lacking experience, despite the internship being designed for inexperienced students: 'I can tell they were disappointed that I didn't have any real-world experience.'

Internships are supposed to be designed to give students experience!

If you've ever seen an entry-level job posting that requires 3-5 years of experience, you might've wondered, "What gives? Aren't these positions supposed to be for people who have little to no experience?" There are definitely levels to entry-level jobs, despite what the name implies. There are entry-level jobs for people fresh out of college, and for those with more professional experience but not enough to be a manager quite yet. Sometimes, a fresh college graduate can do the exact same job as someone with 5 years of experience, but other positions are better suited to someone with a better grasp of the professionalism standards expected in the role. However, there are 22-year-old college graduates with 3-5 years of experience in their field because they were proactive about securing an internship every semester of college. This student is certainly the exception to the rule.

via The Jopwell Collection

_{A young student interviews for an unpaid internship.}
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Internships can be incredibly competitive because college students know that they can be the only way to break into the workforce after they graduate. If you stroll up to a job interview without any relevant experience outside of your college degree, there's a good chance you'll get laughed out of the room at a major corporation. If there's one place a student with no experience can get some, it's an internship sponsored by the school, intended to give its students work experience. In this student's case, he couldn't even get an internship through his school.
An employer left this note at the bottom of my interview form. It's for an internship for students with zero experience...

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_{Trade school student watches as a professional welder works.}
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_{A job interviewer looks disappointedly at an internship applicant after learning that he has no experience in this field beyond his schooling.}
_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
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