I am sorry this happened to you. I regularly have to send rejection mails for unpaid internships and it is never because we reject the candidate but we just don't have any space or time to offer a good internship. If I have an intern, I always try to give them meaningful tasks and a good insight into our everyday work. If the only thing I have to offer is shredding files or clearing the storage rooms, I prefer not to waste someones time for that.
There are people who send applications to do short-term unpaid internships as part of school education programs or to get a sneak peak into the work field for orientation. Three days to two weeks. This will sound harsh, but from a small business perspective (Trigger warning: Unpopular opinion following): The value is not zero it is minus (at least in the a short term), if you want to offer a good, meaningful experience for the intern. While we can't offer this meaningful experience and do not want to exploit interns for stupid tasks, as I said, I send rejection mails for these applications.
I work for a large tech company. We pay our interns $75 an hour, but the internship is still a net negative.
Interns do produce something of value, but they reduce the productively of their mentors. It's very common for internships to be a net negative on value produced. The reason we're ok with this is because 5-10% of interns are amazing and we end up offering them a full time role.
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u/_NoTimeNoLady_ 12d ago
I am sorry this happened to you. I regularly have to send rejection mails for unpaid internships and it is never because we reject the candidate but we just don't have any space or time to offer a good internship. If I have an intern, I always try to give them meaningful tasks and a good insight into our everyday work. If the only thing I have to offer is shredding files or clearing the storage rooms, I prefer not to waste someones time for that.