Everyone hopes to have a few outstanding internship experiences on their resumes to improve their success rates at work or higher education. As a result,"paid internships" have become a shortcut, and scams have emerged endlessly.

The "online internship" bought for tens of thousands of yuan is actually a fake position, and there are also many famous companies with real internship positions that are clearly priced.

How are these positions traded as commodities? How did the market demand for "paid internships" come into being?

Aixin (student): Everyone is queuing up to pay for work (internship). The online (internship) cost 29800, 30,000 yuan.

Intermediary: 12800 (yuan)(online internship) a month, and the internship price for personnel (process) will be higher by 29800 (yuan).

Intermediary: The price for online (internship) is generally around 15000 yuan. You can do it for 21000, 20,000, or 19000 yuan.

Internship positions are being sold at high prices. What kind of internship experience is it that makes college students willing to spend so much?

Aixin (pseudonym) is a sophomore this year and a student majoring in international economics and trade at a "211" college in Sichuan. As soon as he entered college, he began to prepare to apply for postgraduate studies in overseas universities. His goal is clear-ranking among the top 30 universities in the world.

On the track of studying abroad, what "captures" is comprehensive ability. Aixin's undergraduate school has become "quantitative", and if there is room for operation, only practical experience is left. With the recommendation of the overseas study institution, Aixin spent 30,000 yuan to "buy" an online internship position at Xinxin's company.

However, during the one-month internship, Aixin only maintained one-line contact with his "lead instructor", and the number of times was very small.

Aixin: Mentors assign tasks, which are very simple (tasks). There is no project at all, and all the tasks are asked by the mentor alone, which has no practical use in the end.

Without salary and internship certificate, Aixin only received a recommendation letter and a project summary report written by himself.

But Aixin felt that this internship would allow him to write the first line of "internship experience" on his blank resume and also have a "recommender."

The reporter saw an announcement on the company's official website: the company does not cooperate with any organization to carry out related activities such as paid training, paid internships, or paid in-tweets. Therefore, Aixin's paid internship experience is a fake internship that is not recognized by enterprises.

Aixin: I admit that this is a fake internship, and the agency also told me that this is an internship that does not involve personnel matters. I couldn't verify the authenticity of the signature, but after all, the mentor's email address with a company suffix was left in the (recommendation letter).

Xiaojie (pseudonym), a former senior intermediary who has changed careers, said that almost all such "online internships" are fake.

Xiaojie's former senior paid internship agency: Every link can be faked. In fact, many remote "internships" do not involve personnel. The internship certificates are all fake.(Intermediaries) can engrave the fake seals to seal them themselves, or they can bribe personnel to issue them from personnel, but in the end, they will definitely not be included in the system. Or write a mailbox with a suffix (a company).

Even the entire internship program may be "tailor-made" by the agency.

Xiaojie's former senior paid internship agency: They are often packaged. He first had a set of courseware, a project, probably a project he did a long time ago, pretending to be done by students, all of which were actors.

The reporter found that when searching on major online platforms using the keywords "internship" and "internal push", a large number of purchase links and soft and wide content will appear. Internship positions in major companies are "clearly priced" and start at 10,000 yuan.

The reporter learned that most of the positions sold are liberal arts and relatively universal positions. If you need technology like development, you can't pay with a high probability. The main customer groups are international students applying to the United States and the United Kingdom, and basically all of them apply to the top 100 schools in the QS.

Intermediaries can also provide real internships in the offline exit process, but at a higher price.

Aixin: 39800,(nearly) 40,000 yuan.

Intermediary: The price of an internship with personnel will be higher by 29800 yuan.

Can all kinds of internships be paid for?

The reporter consulted a number of agencies as students. Intermediaries all said that they can guarantee to get offers, usually by bringing instructors for interviews.

The agency also guarantees that interns will receive preferential treatment as long as they use the paid channel.

Teacher of overseas study institutions: If you send them in through our agency, the tutor will ask for your opinion on the work content, rather than saying that you will do all the dirty and tiring work.

In fact, for such offline paid internships, intermediaries have strict screening criteria for buyers.

Intermediary 1: You have to screen resumes. Even if you pay for your "211" undergraduate resume with no experience, you may not be able to go (quickly deleted).

Intermediary 2: Our companies here only need 985 and 211 students.

The reporter also found that many intermediaries privately colluded with corporate employees to clearly price internship positions, and paid internships have formed a "gray industrial chain."

Intermediary: There are several sources in this industry who are responsible for talking to "corporate mentors".

Many corporate employees revealed that they had received invitations to "cooperate" from intermediaries. The reporter negotiated with the intermediary as an employee of the company, and the other party promised that as long as the cooperation was reached, the monthly remuneration could be as high as tens of thousands of yuan.

Intermediary 1: With the same qualifications, priority will be given to our interns. If you teach normally,(the remuneration for one person) is about 5000 to 6000 yuan, and a recommendation letter will be 300 to 500 yuan each.

Intermediary 2: Our students are all from leading study abroad institutions. If you are recommended for a successful internship, you will be given a recommendation fee of 5000 yuan.

In this way, intermediaries and corporate employees "work together", making every level of the chain profitable, and ultimately the students pay the bill.

Xiaojie's former senior paid internship agency: Adopt a price difference model, which means that you can take as much money as you want, and then I will sell it. I will decide how much money I take and each earns his own. I earn relatively little, only earning hundreds of thousands in two years. At its peak,(some intermediaries) made 100,000 or 200,000 yuan a month.

Resume anxiety turns students into tools for businesses to make profits. So is it really difficult to find a "big factory" internship on your own?

Students from "211" colleges: Because I didn't have much work experience before applying, I only received feedback after applying for many copies (internship interviews with "Dachang Factory").

Chen Jiaxin's ordinary college student who failed to take the postgraduate entrance examination: There are about 1000 copies on the two platforms combined. There was no opportunity to be hired, so (during the interview) he asked bluntly why he had no internship experience before?

The agency seized the students 'desire for a "beautiful resume" and promoted it crazily. The students also tried their best to "beautify" their resumes.

Xiaojie's former senior paid internship agency: (Paid internship) itself is very utilitarian. It has no substantive gains, but pursues face projects. There are loopholes in your resume. After all, the first internship was earned through payment, and the level must be relatively high. When you go to submit this resume to a second company, personnel may ask some very difficult questions. For example, what role you have in the project, what work you have done, and what you have gained. These questions are not something that "Water" can answer through paid internships in the past.

In recent years, many companies have issued statements saying that they will rectify the chaos of in-payment and strictly prohibit such behaviors.

Tencent recruitment staff member Zou Zhidan: As you can see, whether it is a variety of job search agencies or private ones, this kind of so-called paid internship position, or the kind of internship opportunity where you need to sell some courses to register even if you don't pay, are not Tencent's official job opportunities.

Li Huaping, member of the Legal Advisory Group of the Shanghai City Federation of Trade Unions: Employees communicate privately (with intermediaries), accept these (interns) personnel, and charge corresponding fees. It is obviously a serious violation of the company's rules and regulations. If discovered, the labor contract will be terminated.

In April this year, the Ministry of Education issued an announcement stating that "paid in-tweets" are suspected of unfair competition and fraud, reminding college students to be vigilant against "paid in-tweets" and "intern doll" scams to avoid falling into recruitment traps.

Lawyers said that if everyone refused to pay for internships, there would be no market for it.

Li Huaping, member of the Legal Advisory Group of the Shanghai City Federation of Trade Unions: It is unfair for those with money to enter, but those without money to enter. If students think that their rights and interests need to be protected, they must first refuse to pay for internships. If everyone refuses to pay for internships, then obviously there is no market.

When internships become a tool for intermediaries to "make money" and students "use self-promotion" as bargaining chips, when "paid internships" become the trend, the role of internships will gradually be alienated.

Internship should be an important part of college students 'social practice. Whether it is going to school or finding employment, what examiners examine is never whether the few lines of experience on their resumes are "halo" enough, but the students' efforts and gains in "self-growth".

Xiaofang reminded that college students should be given the "paid internship" scam or the "trap" of "taking shortcuts" constructed by intermediaries.

Keep your eyes open and be vigilant, and parents and teachers should also remind you more.

(The original title is "Vigilance! Spend a lot of money, but fall into unspoken rules... Many people are taking this shortcut →)