Volunteer Work and Internships
The phrase is sometimes used to mean a type of volunteer work that is commonly intended for young people — often students — to get a feel for professional working environments. This usage is common in the United Kingdom, while the American equivalent is intern.
Though the placements are usually unpaid, travel and food expenses are sometimes covered, and at the end of the appointment, a character reference is usually provided. Trainees usually have the opportunity to network and make contacts among the working personnel, and put themselves forward for forthcoming opportunities for paid work.
Many employers in the more sought after professions (e.g. TV, politics, journalism) demand that every new entrant undergo a period of unpaid "work experience" before being able to get paid work.
Read more about this topic: Work Experience
Famous quotes containing the words volunteer and/or work:
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle—absolute busyness—then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy—and without consciousness.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)