From Wall Street Jobs to Unpaid Internships

From www.nytimes.com

April 16, 2009, 4:50 pm

By Jennifer 8. Lee AND Patrick McGeehan
Last year, they worked for marquee names on Wall Street. This year they’re writing college application-like essays for shots at unpaid internships.

Fifty former Wall Street workers with an average of 15 years of financial experience will begin 10-week internships at New York City start-ups as part of an 11-part city program to retrain the city’s unemployed finance workers.

Like many interns, they are working without pay in the hope that they can impress their bosses enough to be offered part-time or full-time work at the end of the program.

Admittedly, these unpaid internships are probably much better deals than unpaid college internships, which have been criticized for separating the haves from the have-nots and being bad for the labor market.

Still, it’s a leap in lifestyle: from catered lunches to having to fix your own computer, from working with Fortune 500 clients to cold sales calls.

Note, they are not called unpaid interns. They are called “consultants.”

“Free, talented labor — how can you say no to that?” said David Hung, the founder of a company called Peek, a start-up that is taking part in the program. “We’re just looking for smart people who are willing to learn new things.” (There were rumors of stipends floating around, though, so perhaps not everything is entirely unpaid.)

The 50 were selected out of a pool of 200 applicants who answered essays like: “Describe a time when you have had to make a dramatic adjustment to an important goal or objective. What were you thinking, feeling, and doing at each step of the change?”

The workers are going through a five-day boot camp that helps familiarize them with venture capital in New York City and includes putting together a mock business plan. “It’s about networking, but it’s really about stepping that psychological hurdle: ‘I’m not going to be a Master of the Universe,’ ” said Garrick Utley, president of the Levin Institute, a branch of the State University of New York that is running the program, called JumpStart NYC. “It’s a question of when do you realize it’s changed.”

That sentiment was echoed by many of the participants. “It’s been sad waking up realizing that the opportunity of getting another job is really slim,” said Rodneyse Bichotte, 36, a former corporate banker at JP Morgan who lost her job in August. “This week really kind of rejuvenated me.”

The program is expected eventually to train as many as 400 former Wall Street workers.

The participating firms, many of which are backed by local venture capitalists, are in the digital media, clean technology and education industries.” Companies that agree to take unpaid internships include Ladders, Peek, SkyGrid, Babble Media, Schoolnet, Solaire and Women in World Banking.

Jonathan D. Harber, chief executive and president of Schoolnet, an educational technology concern, intended his consultant to look into whether the company should expand into the community college market. Ideally, he would want the consultant to investigate the market, set it the unit and then ideally run the entire unit. “That’s the grand slam home run,” Mr. Harber said.

The program is part of the effort to develop a more entrepreneurial ecosystem in the city. Other programs include starting a local venture capital fund and creating local business incubators. It is a path that Mr. Bloomberg is roughly familiar with. After being laid off from Salomon Brothers, Mr. Bloomberg started his company, Bloomberg L.P., in a rented 10-by-10-foot room.

Of course, he left with $10 million in severance.