excellent women
A VOCAL CHAMPION FOR RECENT GRADUATES, TANYA DE GRUNWALD CAMPAIGNS AGAINST UNPAID INTERNSHIPS
“I tell young people it’s OK not to know what you want to be, aged 21 – in fact, it’s normal”
TANYA DE GRUNWALD is founder of Graduate Fog, a careers advice blog campaigning for a better lot for students and graduates.
How many people definitely know what they want to do aged 21? “University careers advice was terrible when I graduated in 2000,” says Tanya de Grunwald, “and it’s not much better now. Unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, or join a big corporate graduate scheme, you’re on your own.” Tanya felt so strongly she decided to write a guide for ‘baffled graduates’ called Dude, Where’s my Career? That was back in 2008. Careers blog Graduate Fog followed, and Tanya has spent the past decade or so highlighting graduate issues – dominated by her campaign work against unpaid internships.
When Tanya first started writing about them, there was little information in the public eye about these schemes of free labour disguised as work experience. She soon realised she was onto something: “Whenever I tweeted about unpaid internships, website traffic doubled,” says Tanya. She began by naming and shaming employers offering unpaid internships – Philip Green’s Arcadia Group, former
BBC Dragon James Caan, The X Factor, and politicians including the minister then responsible for enforcing the minimum wage, David Gauke.
Over the past decade, the debate around unpaid internships has changed a lot: what began as an argument weighing up opportunity versus lack of pay is now much broader. Unpaid internships throw up issues around fair access: these schemes favour graduates from privileged backgrounds. If internships are the gateway to jobs, they need to attract a more diverse pool of talent.
For years, Tanya relied on journalism to pay the bills, fitting in work on Graduate
Fog where she could. “There was no business model,” Tanya says. “And it all felt very negative – focusing on those who weren’t paying their interns.” Hence the foundation of Graduate Fog Employers
Club. Rewarding the good rather than highlighting the bad, this club only admits employers who sign up to a checklist of requirements regarding good recruitment practices. Members include big hitters such as Royal Mail, Google and Santander, with regular members’ events sharing best practice through talks and forums.
“I’m the only person telling young people it’s OK not to know what you want to be, aged 21 – in fact, it’s normal,” Tanya says. “I help them work out what to do in the meantime, to gain skills and experience and a sharper focus for the future.” This year, Tanya has set her sights on ending unpaid internships in the UK entirely, which would make us the first European country to do so.