I'm also troubled by the expansion of the New York finance style intern culture.

We find that having someone do real work for a decent length of time is a great way to evaluate them when they are inexperienced or otherwise hard to evaluate in an interview format.

Internships have their place, but not when it's taking advantage of the applicant. That's when we hire them for short term contracts, we pay them contractor rates (so slightly more hourly than the paycheque would be) to compensate for the lack of security.

We're finding that we end up with people who can treat the business seriously and professionally when that's needed as well as the normal stuff everyone wants like enthusiasm, intelligence and work ethic. Someone willing to run on a treadmill because I'm dangling a carrot in front of them like a jerk is not someone I want on my team, I want someone who will spend their time wisely when I'm paying them for it.

Who would have guessed that treating applicants with respect would pay off, even for a small startup? Oh yeah, we did. And we were right.