THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET: WHERE THE JOBS ARE : STRATEGIES : Working for Free Can Still Pay Off : In some fields, unpaid work opens doors to a career. Of course, sometimes it just involves opening doors.

Since late September, Caroline Sakaguchi has been putting in 20 to 24 hours a week as an intern in the registrar’s office of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her responsibilities include registering newly acquired artworks, tracking the whereabouts of old ones and documenting their condition in rigorous detail.

The aspiring curator works hard, and finds that “the longer I stay, the more they trust me and the more responsibility they give me.” And she loves the work--even though she doesn’t get paid a penny.

“It’s an investment in my future,” says Sakaguchi, 23, who graduated from college in 1991 with a bachelor’s in studio art and English. “It’s not like you can come out of art school and say, ‘OK, make me a curator.’ But if you’ve given up two or three years of your life learning the science, they’ll take you a lot more seriously.”

Internships may be nothing new as a way of getting work experience, but in the last few years they’ve become an increasingly important aspect of career building. Unpaid or low-paid internships are also in keeping with what is likely to be an increasing national emphasis on training. In Germany, a formal apprentice system is largely credited with producing an extraordinarily productive work force and a high standard of living.

Unpaid internships aren’t always wonderful. Aspirants offering their services for free can be exploited or assigned useless gofer work while their employer profits at their expense.

But set up properly, they can be beneficial to both employer and worker. In today’s tight job market, the experience of an internship can provide crucial competitive advantages, including a beefed-up resume, valuable contacts or just a chance to try out a prospective line of work.

“There’s been a continual increase both in those seeking internships and in businesses seeking to hire them,” says Tina Oakland, director of UCLA’s Extramural Programs and Opportunity Center. Part of it, she says, is the economy; even small offices have downsized, and interns are a way to fortify overburdened staffs.

But free labor isn’t the only appeal for business.

“Interns can give businesses a link to the most recent analytic and theoretical thinking in their fields,” says Oakland. “It’s a way to keep the juices flowing, because the students bring a lot of enthusiasm, creativity and up-to-the-minute knowledge. And in exchange, they get the practical experience that they’re lacking. It’s a wonderful trade-off.”

While many universities and colleges have career centers that act as brokers for internships, that needn’t stop you from acting on your own.

Deanne Shultz, for example, is a graduate student in radio, TV and film at Pepperdine University who is interested in production.

A fan of Jay Leno, Shultz submitted a letter and resume to the show’s producer. To her surprise, she was soon called in for an interview. Now she’s working 16 hours a week as an unpaid intern. Her duties haven’t immediately prepared her to be the show’s producer--they’ve ranged from chauffeuring African bullfrogs across town for an animal act to helping with fan mail to picking up a shirt with built-in muscles for one of Leno’s comedy sketches.

Shultz says the experience has given her a more realistic view of her chosen profession.

“One great thing is that the ‘Tonight Show’ is a name,” she says. “It gives you something to talk about on your resume. And I’ve made a lot of good contacts. But the most important thing I’ve gotten out of it is really seeing if this is the job I want to do. I’ve seen that you have to be really dedicated and willing to put in the hours.”

In some cases, the need for internships to prove one’s professional mettle isn’t so much a luxury as a necessity. This is especially true for many health-related fields. Doctors, of course, are required to perform internships (at relatively low pay) as part of their training.

But in other fields, such as the extremely competitive area of physical therapy, field experience is often a prerequisite for acceptance into an academic program.

Lee Lipton is a graduate student in exercise physiology at UC Davis who wants to become a physical therapist. So she’s been volunteering her time at the university’s medical center physical therapy office.

“You can’t even get into the program unless you’ve done an internship,” Lipton says. “The PT school is so competitive you need all the extras you can get.”

And Lipton isn’t bothered by the lack of pay.

“I need the work experience to see if this is what I really want to do,” she says. “And just in terms of personal experience, working in a hospital is incredibly valuable. You learn so much about people. Now I’d do volunteer work in a hospital just for its own sake.”

Still, there is the question of the quality of the internship. If you’re going to work 15 hours a week for free, you don’t want to spend them all with your head in a file cabinet.

“Interns need to establish up front what they’re responsibilities will be, how much clerical versus project-oriented work there will be,” says Karen Suarez, associate director of Occidental College’s career center.

And internships needn’t be limited to undergraduates or the very young.

“Admittedly, it’s much harder to do in another stage of your life, but it’s perfectly viable when you’re older,” says L.A.-based management consult Beverly Bernstein, who has used interns herself. “There’s an inclination to say, ‘Oh, here I am in my 20s again.’ But people who see it as a negative are missing the point.”

What about those who want to retrain but lack either the need or resources to return to school?

Determine your field of interest and ask yourself what you have to offer a prospective mentor, suggests Bernstein. Find out who’s in charge of hiring and try to set up an interview. “If you bring some skills to the table, something that makes it worthwhile for the company, you’ll have a good chance,” she says. “It’s good for them, as long as they don’t feel it’s a burden. And it is a burden as long as you don’t bring skill, motivation, initiative, assertiveness and self-confidence.”

Basically, it comes down to starting on the ground floor and working your way up. Sometimes, especially in a rough-and-tumble business such as entertainment, people will do low-skill work for next to nothing just to make the right contacts--with no guarantee that it will lead to anything.

For example, Our Gang is an L.A.-based temporary employment agency that specializes in placing workers--mostly clerical--in modest-wage jobs in the entertainment industry.

“Most of them are well-educated film school graduates who ought to be making more than $300 to $400 a week,” says Our Gang job counselor Kim Marsh. “They’re hoping it will lead to something bigger, and a lot of times it does. There are people we’ve placed in clerical jobs that have ended up doing quite well in the business.”

In today’s ungenerous job market, working cheaply or for free can be one of the best ways to wedge a foot in the door of a competitive field. And with a little luck, that foot won’t be bare.