Under remuneration, the ad listed "communal lunches", "yoga", "table tennis" and "hotdesking". The ad was removed by the website JobAdder, and IPA later apologised for the "mistake", saying it should have described those attributes as "perks" rather than remuneration. The program underlines a growing trend of lengthy, unpaid internships that are now seen as a prerequisite for a career, and which are actively supported by major universities. Zakk Goodsell, a director of Future Squared, said the company usually has about 10 interns at any one time - the same as its number of paid staff. He said the internship was really a "recruitment process" designed to weed out non-performers, because graduates are "not ready" and are "taught a whole bunch of crap by the universities". "They are not ready": Zakk Goodsell, director of the company Future Squared, said the unpaid internships were necessary to prepare people for the real world of work. However, Mr Goodsell conceded that of 64 interns to come through the firm's doors in the past two years, just one person "passed" and remains employed by the company. Almost half the interns "disappear" after just one week, he said. He doesn't have time to ask why but knows it's because "they're not prepared for a working environment".

"Do you know how the army recruits?" asked Mr Goodsell, who trained with the military. "The job of a soldier is to kill people, and not everybody is cut out for that shit. The same rule applies here." Mr Goodsell said interns at Future Squared work on their own projects within the company's framework, rather than existing clients' work. Although the internships take place away from Future Squared's headquarters, he said he spends "at least" four hours a week with the interns, or "whenever the f--- we are available". IPA said it has placed more than 500 interns since 2012 across many different industries, but over the past year has moved away from direct placements and towards placing university students as part of their course requirements. IPA director Jack Clayfield said unpaid placements and associated expenses were "simply a part of student life". "We don't feel guilty," he told Fairfax Media. "We've got to put this back on the universities. We believe ... we're doing what the universities aren't currently doing." Mr Clayfield, who lives in Orange NSW, said the $990 charge was a "fee for success" and covered IPA's costs including staff, insurance and seats at the Dream Factory. He said unlike rivals, IPA only charges applicants who actually receive an internship. The firm has received the all-clear from Employsure as complying with the Fair Work Act.

But Jack Kenchington-Evans,a union lawyer and director of advocacy group Interns Australia, said he was still "really concerned" about the increasingly common practice of interns paying for the privilege. "It's just taking and no giving," he said. "They will try and characterise this as an educational experience. That still doesn’t pass muster." Mr Goodsell told Fairfax Media the internship was actually a risk-management strategy for Future Squared designed to "weed out people who might screw up our projects". He said the interns got more out of their experience than the company got from them. "For 12 weeks we get to work out whether these people are a liability," he said. "They should never be paid but they should also never be taken advantage of." Asked if his business model was reliant on training interns, Mr Goodsell said: "If they can give me a business model that works better, I’ll change it tomorrow."