NEWS

Date: Apr 02, 2010

Ice Bears Featured In Time Magazine

By Eve Tahmincioglum, Time Magazine; Photo by Andrew Cutaro

When you hear the word intern, you probably don't think of people like Kristina Shands. For starters, she's 38. And she had notched 10 years of experience as a fundraiser at a nonprofit in Tennessee before she was laid off last year. But now that Shands is considering moving into sports management, she's interning with the Knoxville Ice Bears hockey team, writing game summaries and handing out stats on game day. She devotes about 10 hours a week to the Bears, and she does it for free. "I'm getting to see the inner workings of a professional hockey team, learning about the business side of sports, and I get to watch hockey," Shands says. "I'm having fun."

Unpaid internships have long been a mainstay for students who get academic credit in lieu of a paycheck. But in the Great Recession, with the unemployment rate hovering near 10%, job-search sites like CareerBuilder and Monster.com are reporting increases in the number of postings for internships. And more and more college graduates and even middle-aged professionals are willing to work for free in hopes that it will help them land a paying gig.

"You know the old Depression-era signs, 'I'll work for food?,'" asks Philadelphia workplace attorney Robin Bond. "Well, now they say, 'I'll work for free.'" Bond says she has heard from a growing number of unemployed professionals looking to volunteer for corporations because they don't want gaps in their résumé.

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