I think I originally thought it would all be very clear-cut. Finish university, have the summer off and then ‘Bang!’ – straight into the dream job I always wanted… Well it’s a year down the line and I’m afraid to say I’m still looking for it BUT I have spent the last 4 months doing something. Actually doing something every day, having something to get out of bed for and to make weekends feel like they are well-deserved! A friend of mine introduced me to WEXO and after a couple of interviews, I accepted a paid internship.
For the past 4 months, I have been working for new start-up, made.com, an online furniture company, backed by Brent Hoberman, that cuts out the middleman by ordering in bulk and thus delivers at affordable prices. Design or furniture was never something I thought I’d start having an interest in at all so it took a while for me to come round to the idea. My responsibilities here have been varied; I am first port of call for all customer and press enquiries (which can get pretty busy), I also write the design blog on our site and have started doing the copy for product pages. It is a varied role and although I am still trying to explore and pinpoint what I would ideally like to do as a career, it has been an enlightening experience. Working in a small start-up company is educational as you are exposed to all sorts of vocations and involved in many different decisions. Opinions count and working in a small team makes you feel like you’re really part of it.
Since starting here in April, our collection has tripled and we launch a new product every week. This means there is always something to do and with our first deliveries, lots of customers to deal with. This can be quite testing but it does teach you to be patient and deal with all sorts of angry, frustrated or sometimes even happy people!
Looking back over the past few months, this has been time well spent, as I had come to the end of my tether with temping agencies and tedious, unrewarding roles. I have now gained more hands-on experience, feel like a part of something and I’m still not entirely sure what I want to do but I’ve learnt a lot and it has undoubtedly been a good starting point.
Nicola Seagroatt
It’s been a while since I stuck my oar in on the blogging front but I wanted to share with you my comings and goings with WEXO over the last week or so.
Last Saturday, WEXO were one of the Exhibitors at The Sunday Times Festival of Education at my old school, Wellington College. This was a unique event with presenters ranging from OW Rory Bremner to Michael Gove MP, Lord Baker to Germaine Greer and the Duchess of Kent to my old economics teacher John McArthur (now at ISCO). I counted 84 speakers in total who waxed lyrical on everything from dyslexia to addiction, the disadvantages of exams (too late) and British schools preparing a world class workforce. I was busy preaching the WEXO word and getting people to guess how many sweets were in the jar (217 – well done Mark Little on 210 – your £50 M&S voucher is on its way) but I did make it to the last of these talks. John Morewood, Graduate Recruitment Manager of HSBC (my old shop), Hugh Husband (McKinseys), Sir Anthony Cleaver (nice red socks) et al discussed how poor numeracy and literacy are from applicants (please at least use spell check for starters). The audience then quizzed the panel about children not knowing what to study for specific vocations (we have just started working with www.u-xplore.com to this very end). At the end, it was particularly interesting to hear the Secretary of State for Education talk about his new ambitions including a return to traditional A-levels with exams at the end of 2 years. Bizarrely, his patter sounded more socialist than capitalist and I was particularly impressed with his ability to take 6 questions in a row and then address each in turn with no more than a glass of water in his hands. There seems to be a common view (which I subscribe to) that teachers need to be better trained and supported; and that this country needs to focus more on Science, Engineering, Maths & Technology.
On Monday, WEXO were honoured to be invited to a Gala Dinner at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate The Prince of Wales’s 25th Year as President of Business in the Community (BITC). HRH, Sir Stuart Rose, Philip Green and Stephen Howard were there to present the prizes and Stephen Fry compèred. It was uplifting to hear such homage paid to HRH. It even made me wonder whether Price Charles was in fact a force for good?! It was a shame that Sir Stuart’s Work Inspiration initiative, which WEXO wholeheartedly supports, (and as a business you can too here) was not referenced; but it was encouraging to see SMEs recognised in The Small Company of the Year Award which went to the wool company Herdy. Was it their lamb that was so delectably rustled up with the buttered spring greens and warm rosemary vinaigrette (washed down with lashings of Rothschild Viognier Vin de Pays)?
After three days of hard labour, on Wednesday evening I was due a break and got invited to go and play tennis at Buckingham Palace (pathetically childish excitement ensued). A great friend works for the royal family (now there’s a WEXO blog we’d like to read) and had been asked if she’d like to use the tennis court. The gardens at ‘BP’ are lush and beautiful and HRH has one of the biggest flower pots known to man. Sadly the only Queen in residence was of the Apoidea variety.
Robin Kennedy
Co-Founder & CEO
WEXO
P.S. As per a recent Press Release, WEXO is campaigning to let SMEs recoup the costs of a 3 month paid internship from forthcoming VAT hike. To register your support, please comment below.
Since we started WEXO it has been really useful to receive your feedback – and particularly from those of you wanting to get involved with what we do here. Over the last few months we have signed some of you up to the WEXO Ambassador Programme. This initiative is designed to give you a bit of virtual work experience whilst helping us spread the word about WEXO.
This Friday we will be hosting the first in a series of Ambassador events where we will bring a bunch of you guys down to meet companies that YOU have expressed interest in. We here at WEXO recognise the importance of that personal touch.
The day will consist of an informal chat over lunch followed by a guest speaker. So after some food to eat we will give you some food for thought. On this occasion the speaker is Paul Harrison from Carve Consulting. Paul is an expert in the area of social media and has consulted for a number of multinational companies. WEXO aims to arm people with all the information they could possibly need to easily find that perfect role.
Following the talk you will then get the chance to meet companies that YOU have expressed an interest in and will be able to discuss what they are looking for and what a career in their respective fields would be like. Armed with this information and having experienced first hand all that WEXO is about these Ambassadors will then go out and fly the WEXO flag at Universities across the UK. Keep an eye out for one near you soon!
WEXO – ‘It’s not who you know, it’s who you are’
The last few weeks have seen a lot of news items talking about things
getting ‘lost’ especially the ‘lost generation’:
According to the Guardian:
1 in 3 university places could be lost
Then there was the Princes Trust report talking about Losttalent costing the state £3.5m
each day in Job Seekers Allowance
On Monday The Times talked about lost opportunity as companies auction off work experience for up to £3,700
BUT we don’t think Britain is lost yet. The UK’s most important UK corporate index, the FTSE 100 is up over 40% from its lows, sterling has defied expectation and rallied in recent months (largely at the expense of the Euro) and with the possibility of fresh leadership come the Summer we’re expecting the usual bust:boom transition to snap in to place soon. Barclays announced record profits and record tax revenue for UK Plc yesterday suggesting that we might see change sooner rather than later. Even more encouragingly, this morning’s UK unemployment statistics showed an unexpected fall…
Amidst all this, we were pleased to have our efforts recognised here in the Financial Times last week. We are very proud to be able to offer companies across the UK tax efficient ways (and occasionally subsidies) to take on graduates on tax free employment schemes (Get more details here). We are now also putting the wheels in motion to lobby the government to incentivise small companies to take on more graduates. AGR research has demonstrated that graduates contribute around £1 billion a year of added value to the UK economy. The University of Lancaster have produced research suggesting that after three years, every £1 spent through
graduate recruitment schemes yields a return of £5.30.
From our travels to Cardiff University last week, we know there is clearly a lot of graduate talent about. But we know life is difficult at the moment. And while job rejections may not be any easier to stomach remember the words of Winston Churchill: Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. Keep priming up those WEXO profiles and we will do what we can to big up your CV…
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 graduating from university in August 2008 with a research masters in archaeology, I was fairly confident – despite the recession – that I would be able to find some kind of work, even if it wasn’t my dream job. Sixth months down the line, after numerous failed job applications, unreturned email enquiries, and useless job agencies, a friend suggested that I join WEXO.
After joining and applying for a few jobs, I quickly obtained some work experience working for WEXO itself, and out of this I obtained the internship I am currently doing: working for Intelligence Squared (IQ2), London’s premier debating forum. I am currently working in a small team, helping to build their new website. Not only do I have the chance to put to use the skills I gained at university, but I am also constantly adding new skills to my CV. In addition to helping source content for the website, I carry out research for the background information on the written articles and videos that will appear on the site, and provide input about its layout and style. But the main new skill I have learnt is how to use the software that allows us to add content to the site, and the associated testing and editing. This job was not something I had ever thought of doing when I graduated, but this internship has opened up a whole new career path for me.
What I would recommend about WEO is that it is more personalised than other websites that offer jobs or internships. When I first joined WEXO I was already tired of other websites emailing me details of jobs that were entirely unsuited to me and which seemed to have been chosen at random. Within weeks of joining WEXO I had gained a few days’ work experience there. Shortly after that they arranged for me to have an informal interview (a drink in a pub!) with someone from IQ2, and the next week I started working there. I am hugely grateful to WEXO for this. Although I have only been at IQ2 for two months, I already feel that I have greatly increased my chances for obtaining future employment in a range of roles.
Mark Roberts
The three-weeks of work experience I did with Quintessentially Escape this September (through WEXO) were just brilliant!
Having done a couple of internships before, I’d prepared myself for a bit of slave-labour, some coffee-tray-carrying and manic filing of dusty old documents, but it turned out to be the exact opposite. The application process was incredibly simple, just a click and an optional cover letter, and then, after a casual interview, I was away… Subsequent emails from the guys at Quintessentially showed me that they actually wanted me to come, and that I would in fact be useful to them (which is what any intern hopes for!) and on my arrival, having been greeted by an office filled with friendly faces, I was told to pull up a chair at my own desk, and presented with a list of interesting tasks to perform; letters, research, phone calls, website work….everything! Therefore, by the end of the work experience I’d been given a real insight into most aspects of the company.
The problem with work experience is that you usually feel like a bit of a waste of space; you’ve written to a company in the hope of an internship, they’ve begrudgingly agreed, and they make it pretty clear throughout that you’re a hindrance rather than a help. But Quintessentially, like any company advertising for interns on WEXO, really wanted help, so I was constantly busy and felt useful throughout. Moreover, they talked me through anything I didn’t understand, and by the end of the three weeks I really felt I’d had a proper taste of company-life.
Some people view unpaid work experiences as a bit of a chore that you have to struggle through in order to decorate your CV, but this certainly wasn’t; though it involved a lot of work, it was fun and has definitely helped me to work out which career-path I’d like to head down in the future… Thank you WEXO!
Nell Fane
I came out of university in the summer of 2008 thinking that I would walk into a job. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I had a nightmare for the next 6 months trying to find one. Interview after interview and reaching the final stages I was unable to stand out.
What WEXO has given me is a fighting chance to get one. It has allowed me the opportunity to show what I have got. I now am now in my seventh month and I have some crucial experience behind me. I am working in a small commercial team helping to sell video content to entertainment sites. I have already had small success directly bringing two large online retailers to trial which will hopefully go into contract.
Hopefully my Christmas present will be a job at this company. If not I will be in a much stronger situation to gain employment.
Greg Bailey
I’m looking for a job in fashion editorial, it can hardly be said I’ve taken the easy route. What girl doesn’t want to work for Vogue. But since I’m far from well connected, and during a recession? I have to be mental. After graduating this June from Sussex with a 2:1 in Philosophy and English, I have nevertheless been trying to carve out the beginnings of my longed-for career in fashion.
I find it hard to believe the help and lucky breaks I’ve had through WEXO; at times I’ve had to pinch myself. I first spotted them on a Google ad and followed the link, but when I realised it was £10 to apply, I have to admit I was put off. I talked about all the amazing opportunities on there with my boyfriend and he said it was definitely worth it. I knew there’s no way I could get to those high profile companies otherwise – they must get hundreds of phone calls. This would be a great way of getting noticed.
So I did, and it’s like having a well connected uncle in just about every industry. I even met the boys working at WEXO (nice guys) and they pointed out to me a placement with women’s lifestyle website, Toptips.com. Although it wasn’t directly fashion related, it was Editorial experience and would look great on my CV. Plus, I just hate being out of work – I would much rather be out there learning new things and making connections than waiting for replies to applications that never come.
I was working under the Founding Editor of the website, Kate Reardon, who also, just so happens to be the Contributing Editor of Vanity Fair. On my first day I was obviously nervous, but she was lovely, even taking me out for lunch. I went on to realise that the ‘Christa’ who shared the office with us was none other than Christa D’Souza, one of my personal heroes and Contributing Editor of Vogue! Only a few months ago I actually cried when my boyfriend’s mum recycled the Vogue ‘Body Special’ with a fantastic article by Christa as the centre piece. It was such a help to talk to them both about my career and learn a million exciting things about theirs.
But my best work experience experience so far has to be one morning when Christa had popped out and I was editing the site for Kate. Christa called to say she’d forgotten her notes for a speech she was giving and asked if I would mind jumping in a cab and bringing them to her at Louis Vuitton. I didn’t need to think about it, I was out of my seat and in the cab before I hung up the phone. I ended up helping her work on the speech that afternoon with none other than Kim Hersov, Editor-at-Large of Harpers Bazaar! I was mixing with Louis Vuitton’s top buyers while Vuitton-clad models milled around – around me, a scruffy little intern (with a big grin). My worst work experience experience? Cleaning a dirty wall. The life of an intern is full of ups and downs!
Ruth Gibbs
