written March 22nd, 2009 · 0 comments

Hello all:)

I began my application process for internships last week and got 2 callbacks before the week was out! I was happy…but then I realized quickly, that it was too good to be true. The one internship could not guarantee that they would hire me after the 6 month internship, and the work didn’t fit my design personality (not creative enough), so that one was out of the question. And the other internship was a real job in disguise of an internship. I was floored.

I had a try out day there this week and discovered there was no designer that I would be an intern to. No, I WAS to be the designer. The boss protested and said that they were looking for a designer, but until then? I guess that would be my job. At 200 euros a month. The intern I would be replacing had been there for 7 months. Five of which were under the guidance of a designer, and then the designer moved on, and for the past 2 months, this intern had been doing all graphic design responsibilities himself. No thank you. I checked online where I found the ad for my internship, and there were no ads from that company for full time designers. So I can only imagine what their motives are….

I am constantly shocked and appalled by stories like this in Berlin. Companies FULL of interns, and a small percentage of real full time employees. No wonder Berlin has been in bad economic shape for so long!!! Interns are being used and thrown out for new ones. Granted, many students in Germany need internships (about 18 months of them) to graduate with a degree they call here an Ausbildung (a 3-year degree for mostly craft related studies, which is lower than a bachelors). BUT, this really lowers the amount of actual jobs here! I mean, if I took that internship, I can already see that there would be no real Designer ever hired, I would be working as a real designer, doing real projects, earning almost nothing, and they would never offer me a job afterwards because they would just look for another intern to replace me. I learned from speaking with others there that apparently 75 percent of that company is interns.

On top of all this, the boss didn’t offer me the full time design job she said they were looking to fill, when, hello, I AM a designer. She hadn’t even looked at my website and all of my work to see my potential. I guess she just wasn’t really concerned with the quality of the work she would be getting, which is sad, sad, sad, but maybe the reality of the real world. I am too naive to know for sure. I am thoroughly dissapointed and trying to hope that the rest of Berlin is not this way. Just gotta keep searching!