It’s much easier to be reactive than revolutionary and critiques by definition tend to be more critical than complementary. And so it seems today with the reviews of a new government guide – Parent Motivators: A parent’s guide to helping graduates find work.

It effectively encourages parents to show ‘tough love’ towards their graduate offspring and the most rational review I have read was by Graeme Paton in yesterday’s Telegraph but today the Telegraph are on the attack via Philip Johnstone. It is a very well written article. (I myself am spending the next few days working from home and oddly my mother seems to agree with its sentiment!). Johnstone is clearly well read (and as per a previous blog I agree with him on higher education policy) but surely the report is merely a guide – not a directive – and I suspect that some parents outside of the home counties (and even some within judging by my experiences) might find it useful.

I also stumbled upon the ‘Dude Where’s My Career ‘ (DWMC) blog response which is very amusing but like today’s Telegraph article it assumes that Peter Mandelson wrote it and that he should be concentrating on other things and wasting less money (NB: I am no fan of the government but let’s not forget that neither the Tories nor Mandy have ruled out working together when Labour are evicted from power on 25th March).

I confess, I haven’t read the report cover to cover and it might seem a little patronising but it was written by Denise Taylor (Award winning career coach and author of ‘How to get a job in a recession’) and not Mandy (though his Business Innovation and Skills department did produce it). Denise’s credentials as a chartered psychologist and MBA are substantiated by her experiences working with organisations ranging from Vodafone to Christian Aid. All this and from her Tweets (@amazingpeople), it would appear that she even reads NME so she can’t be all bad. In fact she’s probably better qualified than most to write such a guide and I suspect that BIS are merely endorsing it and giving her a platform.

The glaring omission from the report itself was obviously not to mention WEXO in the Useful links section. Joking apart though, the government’s shortcomings are better demonstrated by their failure to research and support private sector initiative and their tendency to try to do things (badly) themselves. We are actively promoting their BIS and LDA programmes to subsidise companies taking on interns and promote paid graduate endeavour (email info@wexo.co.uk for more details). But their own vehicle for promoting it probably cost the tax payer unnecessarily. As DWMC says “First up, we had the much-slated Graduate Talent Pool (“Wow, a load of unpaid internships – that’ll help pay off my £15k of debt…”). This is the very vehicle that could simply have combined private sector initiatives and reduced graduate unemployment with the investment allocated to incentivising companies to open their doors and remunerate them.


Robin Kennedy

There’s been a bit of debate recently on BBC etc on ‘Intern Abuse’. The discussion seems to focus on a) Job-hunting university leavers being warned against paying for services to help get them internships and b) Companies not paying their interns.

The BBC didn’t get round to publishing our feedback so here it is:

We operate on the basis of a ‘Freemium’ model where users can create profiles and search for opportunities for FREE but pay a one-off £10 membership fee which gives them a number of membership benefits (discounts, access to events etc) as well as the ability to identify the names of companies and make applications. In our view this does not constitute anything more than a very reasonable admin fee. Without some form of hurdle like this, companies would be inundated with speculative applications – one of the issues we seek to address. As it is, we find that there is a correlation between the quality (or relevance) of profiles/applications and those that are prepared to pay to join the network.

With advertising rates low, we have had to find ways to make our business model work – we are not yet profitable! To increase supply, companies can post opportunities for free on WEXO but pay us to help them find the right people.

With regard to unpaid internships, we encourage our companies to pay their graduate interns at least the national minimum wage (as legally required and as we have done ourselves) but we do not enforce it. This is a grey area though. I understand that a lot of the internships available on the Graduate Talent Pool are unpaid and that there are unpaid interns at both the BBC and in parliament! Exploitation is wrong but ultimately I would argue that market economics should dictate and if someone wants to work for free to gain valuable experience then they should be allowed to. We are however lobbying the government to subsidise paid internships to encourage companies to offer them.

Robin Kennedy

After digging around for details on the government’s ‘Graduate Talent Pool’ initiative which will be going live to graduates in September, we spoke to the programme manager this morning.  He said that the government promotion of this scheme will be particularly geared towards educating companies to the benefits of internships and that they will be working with existing private sector initiatives like ours.

In light of the current economic situation and the graduation of this year’s students into one of history’s toughest job markets, it is encouraging to see the Government helping graduates to gain skills and open doors to companies with their Graduate Talent Pool initiative.

While many large companies already offer structured internship schemes, work placement programs need to be promoted within small and medium-sized businesses. It is these SMEs that represent the backbone of the British economy.  They are in the greatest need of talented and skilled students but lack the resources to proactively recruit them.

We need to ensure that we continue to invest in these students’ futures by training up the next generation of professionals!

The Graduate Talent Pool goes live later in the year, but don’t forget that for students graduating this summer and for those of you currently looking for work, there are already a number of resources available online and offline to help you pursue your chosen career.

- Robin Kennedy, WEXO CEO