I have volunteered to work - for free - for 1) a new hedge fund with only one employee, 2) a small wealth management firm who is not faring well recently, 3) a private equity firm with about 8 employees, and 4) a non-profit who just rejected me for a job. And they all said thanks but no thanks! Am I on glue, or am I mistaken in thinking a company would love to have an MBA work for them, gratis? I must be seriously retarded and/or naive, because I believed that companies would jump at the chance to get free help.
Maybe here's what's happening:
- They think that if I'm free, there must be something wrong with me, so they don't want to take a chance on someone who's no good? Ok, but maybe they could try me out for a week and see if I am mentally defective before making that decision.
- They don't want to have to spend a lot of time training someone. Ok, again, I see the point, but the company would still save money as long as I volunteered for as long as it took to train me. Internships work like this all the time - I don't see how this is different.
- If I'm a volunteer, I'm less committed to the company than if I was an employee, and thus I may just not show up one day and let everyone down. To this I say, why not try me out for a while and see what happens before deciding I'm not worth the risk. Besides, a volunteer is there because they want to be and an employee is there because they have to be - now you tell me who sounds like they're more committed to the company?
This is such utter BS I can't even stand it. I don't know how anyone can justify turning away volunteers, but somehow companies (and non-profits) in the Bay Area have succeeded in doing it. So since these places are so cash-rich that they don't need free assistance, I guess we can all stop donating money to charity since it's obvious it isn't needed. We should all go here instead.
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