Fans become unpaid interns for influencers; but it’s worth?

The New York Times

In September 2020, Audrey Peters, who had recently gained fame as an influencer on TikTok, signed her first partnership with a brand. An account called @Overheard asked her to recite snippets of outrageous conversations from others during walks through Manhattan that she filmed with her smartphone. But it didn’t take long for Peters’s friends to lose patience with the idea of ​​walking a few steps behind her holding her cell phone to record scenes from her walks around town.

A fellow content creator suggested that Peters, 24, instead look for an unpaid intern — someone who would help her with her job in exchange for the experience gained. The idea seemed perfect. Peters had been an unpaid intern in her university years, and the experience benefited her. That’s why she posted an Instagram story in which she announced a vacancy for an unpaid, part-time internship.

The ad was not well received. The comments piled up, defining her as a classist and accusing her of exploitation. In retrospect, she says, the job description she did in the ad was incomplete. She intended to cover the intern’s expenses with transportation and meals, and to introduce him to the representatives of the brands with whom she has partnerships.

But still, Peters said in a November phone interview, “even after I ran into problems and started getting heavy criticism, I continued to get emails and messages from people who said they would love to work for me.” And more than a year after she posted the ad, candidates continued to come forward.”

After a decade of labor battles, class-action lawsuits and laws aimed at making internships less abusive, it can be hard to understand what interest anyone would have in holding a position like this (paid or unpaid) with a working internet celebrity. on its own. But for people who grew up online and spend most of their time online, sharing carefully edited videos and exchanging product recommendations, the opportunity to learn how to make a living from the content they create can be appealing.

In a 2019 survey conducted by Morning Consult of 2,000 Millennials, 54% said they would become influencers if they could. Now, after nearly two years of radically changing the way people work and live, the appeal of creative freedom and flexibility (not to mention the potential for a higher income) may have become even stronger.

“Younger people don’t want to live a corporate life. They want to have fun, be in something relevant, integrated into the culture,” said Gabe Feldman, 26, director of business development at Viral Nation, which represents 300 influencers around the world.

There are many ways to become an influencer. Sometimes this happens because of a fluke: a video goes viral and brands start looking for partnerships. Some people spend money on training courses or on “bots” that help expand their following, in the hope that this will help them gain influence. Others go directly to the source, and message an influencer they admire, asking for a job.

Of course, arrangements like these can have downsides, including odd working hours, unstructured work, limited protection under labor laws, and difficult accountability. Not to mention the mood swings of the followers. “Let’s say you work with an influencer who was doing incredibly well in 2021, but in 2022 their audience stops growing,” Feldman said. “It means losing what made the work worthwhile.”

And there is also the issue of money. Feldman estimates that only 40% of Viral Nation’s clients pay their interns based on a fixed hourly pay scale, regular wages or bonuses for work delivered. For many young people, leaving university in debt and facing the highest inflation in 30 years, working for free has become unsustainable.

Today, most large companies pay interns, after several media and entertainment companies were convicted of violating labor laws in the 2010s. But unpaid internships are not illegal by definition.

In 2015, an appeals court ruled that they were admissible if the intern is the “primary beneficiary” of the internship. The US Department of Labor is now working on a list of seven criteria an employer must meet if they want to hire unpaid interns, including a clear educational component at work and a job description that means the intern “complements rather than replace, the work of paid employees”.

New York and California also have strict criteria for employers who want to offer unpaid internships. A company must pay minimum wage and overtime to its interns if they are replacing an employee or performing tasks that would normally be an employee’s job. “This is because the number of abuses is so high,” said Anita Sharma, a lawyer whose law firm has a large number of influencers among its clients in New York City and Los Angeles.

“In the world of influencers, businesses scale very quickly,” she said. “If I’m overwhelmed, my audience is growing and I need help, and people text me saying they want to work for me and learn from me, it’s a perfect match.”

Several lawyers we contacted for this article who specialize in social media work said they are not aware of any case of an intern who has sued an influencer. But, Sharma said, “a disgruntled intern always has the option of complaining to the state’s labor authorities, and they will act, which ensures accountability.”

Lauren Berger, CEO and founder of Intern Queen, a consulting firm on internships and career development, cautions influencers and urges them to be careful. “The guidelines are ambiguous,” she said. “What are influencers going to do when one of the interns comes back after a few years and says ‘I helped her but she didn’t pay me’? There’s a lawsuit waiting over there.”

Kalyn Johnson Chandler, who runs Effie’s Paper, a stationery and lifestyle products brand, said that when her company was small, interns were given transportation vouchers and cash to cover their lunch expenses. As the business grew, she started paying a real cash stipend of $15 an hour.”

Hala Taha, on the other hand, sees the experience the intern acquires as the most valuable form of remuneration. She built her company, Young and Profiting Media, with the help of 40 interns and volunteers, since 2018.

“These are podcast listeners who ask how they can help, or say they admire me, or want to get started in the podcast business,” said Taha, 35. “They want to get into the media industry, or TV and radio, and they don’t have experience.” .

She had seven interns, at the end of 2021, who helped with writing texts, managing comments and editing videos. Most of them received a stipend of US$ 300 (R$ 1,600) a month in exchange for 15 hours of work a week – the equivalent of about US$ 5 an hour (R$ 27).

“I’m a great writer and a great video producer,” said Taha. “So when I comment in real time on the work they do, my estimate is that they double their technical competence in a month’s work.” “I don’t think it’s at all odd not to pay for their work,” she added.

Sharma pointed out that in some states a minimum wage is required to satisfy the requirements if the intern is doing “substantive work” such as planning social media posts, editing captions and publishing content without supervision. “These are important and essential tasks for the influencer’s job,” she said.

After four months, Taha said, she offers most of her interns a full-time job with salaries between $35,000 and $48,000 a year, precisely because they gained a lot of practical experience. Others, who have not yet graduated from university, are hired at a rate of between US$ 17 (R$ 92) and US$ 20 (R$ 108) per hour.

Caitlyn Saw, 21, was Taha’s intern in Q3 2020 without pay. She worked around 15 hours a week, planned social media posts, and reviewed subtitles for Taha’s YouTube videos. She was able to afford the internship because she still lived with her parents and worked part-time for an advertising agency.

“I did two unpaid internships before Young and Profiting Media. I was used to not getting paid,” Saw said. “Obviously it’s not the ideal situation, but I think an internship with her is incredible value.”

Katie Welch, 44, vice president of marketing at Rare Beauty, offers career advice on TikTok and said an internship with an influencer can be “a great place to start a career,” especially for anyone looking to work in marketing or public relations. . But it also advises caution. “What I would say to an intern is that they need to determine if they are being paid fairly and treated fairly.”

Jon Rettinger, 41, who operates several tech-oriented YouTube channels, said his hope was to provide helpful guidance to his interns. It’s “real work, without the Lamborghinis and boxing stuff,” he said, noting that many content creators are victims of online bullying. “I wish someone had warned me, because I was unprepared,” he said.

Former interns say they appreciate the guidance they’ve received. Sara Naqui, who started out taking pictures as a volunteer for Chandler at Effie’s Paper, now has a contract with the company and her own YouTube channel. “She supported me in a way I’ve never seen another adult support in my creative efforts,” Naqui, 24, said of Chandler.

Vela Scarves, a brand of “hijabs” for women interested in modern fashion, and its founder and creative director Marwa Atik, make a point of inviting female followers to volunteer for photo shoots and to apply for internships. “You’re addressing a select group of people who already support your work, believe in your work and see themselves using the product,” said Atik, 31. “It’s a much stronger connection when we bring our girls.”

Khadija Sillah, 23, a former intern at Vela Scarves, said, “Marwa went out of her way to mentor me and helped me connect with brands and develop content ideas, even when I lacked motivation.” She was recently hired as a full-time employee in the brand’s social media area.

Chandler said his interns helped build Effie’s Paper’s social media presence — on Pinterest, Instagram and ultimately TikTok — starting from scratch. “A decade ago, I was a lawyer and I was trying to become a businesswoman,” she said. “I didn’t have time to think about social media.”

Later, Chandler enlisted the help of a former intern at the company, Chloe Helander, who had created a social media consultancy. Helander suggested that Chandler be the star of Effie’s Paper’s social media accounts. After all, many companies today treat their executives as the face of their brands.

Chandler initially greeted the idea with skepticism. “I think I’m too dark skinned, and I’m too old,” she said. Now, says Chandler, “it’s because of her that my face appears in everything.”