Recent LSE graduate Milena Bottero has started a venture that aims to create a ‘guesthouse’ for unpaid interns in London, that would provide cheap accommodation for 10-15 people undertaking placements for up to 6 months.

London under a blanket of snow

On Monday morning, a freezing central London greeted me with a tube strike and thus a 40 minute walk across town to none other than Inspiring Interns, where I began (you guessed it)…an internship! 

As a thoroughly modern, cool, exciting (and very modest) company, Inspiring Interns spends a lot of its time browsing the Twittersphere, keeping a beady eye out for industry developments, potential clients, friends anything useful or interesting.

While the concept of today’s graduates doing internships is a much-debated issue, a more worrying trend established in the US appears to be gaining headway this side of the pond: interns (or their parents) who pay large sums of money to secure unpaid work placements.