The pandemic could fix internships

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us //link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/20368990.92584/aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS90ZWNobm9sb2d5/582c8673566a94262a8b49bdBb89b0674 [Get the newsletter]( Hi folks, it’s Shelly. Like most everything else in tech touched by the pandemic, summer internships are going virtual. That’s a bummer for college students, who say there’s no way that Zoom happy hours and Netflix viewing parties can replace the office foosball games and impromptu happy hours. Personal connections forged during internships can lead to lifelong friendships and, crucially, full-time jobs. But the rise of the virtual internship could bring something good to Silicon Valley: a work experiment that strips away some of the industry's built-in biases. For starters, not requiring interns to be able to afford pricey rent in the Bay Area or other tech hubs could make jobs more accessible. Metrics-driven digital-only hiring could allow people making hiring decisions to excise prejudice. And in a digital workplace, bosses will have to judge interns mainly on their output, not their social performance or how well they fit into existing cliques. That’s how Jeffrey Moss, founder of a company called Parker Dewey, sees the coming summer of online internships. Parker Dewey connects employers with students for so-called micro-internships, or short-term, professional assignments carried out remotely over five to 40 hours. The company has seen a rush of new business as hiring processes have moved online. Moss thinks that digital-only interactions could reframe hiring decisions that were previously influenced, implicitly or explicitly, by race, gender or pedigree. "The virtual internships won't be perfect or easy, and they won't compare with the real thing," he said. But they will come with an “opportunity to root out entrenched bias.” About 80% of the students selected for Parker Dewey internships are women, minorities or first-generation-college students. Placing those interns at companies helps promote diversity and prods "hiring managers who have relied on crutches like only hiring students of a certain academic pedigree,” Moss said. Silicon Valley does have a problem. Despite widely publicized efforts to increase diversity at their companies, the coders, engineers, and other technical workers at companies like Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google remain overwhelmingly white and male. Less than a quarter of Facebook and Google's technical workforce is female. And Google has reportedly [scaled back]( its inclusion initiatives. At Apple, the proportion of black technical workers hasn't budged from 6% since it began releasing diversity figures five years ago. Changing the makeup of tech giants will start with the entry-level workers flowing into the companies. And members of the internship class of 2020 could serve as guinea pigs for a re-imagined hiring protocol where students are judged on their potential and performance, rather than how well they hold their liquor when partying with colleagues who mostly look like them. College students might miss out on the free lunches, massages and nap pods that come from on-campus internships, but they might just help usher in what could be an unusually diverse cohort of new employees. —[Shelly Banjo](mailto:sbanjo@bloomberg.net) If you read one thing Foreign students came to the U.S. to study science, math and technology, hoping to get jobs at America's top tech companies. Now, [2020 graduates are seeing their plans upended]( by shuttered campuses, closed borders, inflexible immigration policies and an economy that seized up just as they were about to enter the workforce. 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The company rolled out updates to its e-commerce features on Tuesday. Gig economy workers may be [driving gasoline prices up]( from a 30-year low. Apple's streaming service is building up a back catalog of old shows, a move that could help it [compete with rivals]( like Netflix. Spotify stock jumped on Tuesday after it made a deal with [comedian and TV host Joe Rogan]( for exclusive rights to his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” The New York Times estimates that more than 900 of Amazon's 400,000 blue-collar workers [have had Covid-19](.  A special offer for Fully Charged readers | [For just $3.99 a month](, get unlimited access to Bloomberg.com, where you'll find trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters.  You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Fully Charged newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022