Someone somewhere was trying to say something last Thursday. I tend to wake up in the week days to the wonderfully illuminating BBC Radio 4 Today programme at 6am* (the first 30 minutes gives you your daily dose of everything you need to know about current affairs, business and sport – in that order with some weather and a newspaper review thrown in for good measure). I miss Ed Stourton but I feel at ease with Evan Davis (Dragon’s Den), there’s something quite matronly about Sarah Montague and Garry Richardson (Sports) might be no Christian O’Connell but especially given the hours he works (and the fact that he’s been doing it since 1981) he can crack impromptu gags with the best of them.

Sandwiched between details of David Cameron’s David Letterman interview (I would never send my son to Eton and there’s no way he sounds like James Bond) and news that the FTSE closed lower on Spanish economic woes (really?!) was the announcement of a new website, Unistats, that seems to help young people (including my cousin, Charles, 18 and currently working down the local boozer) work out how much they can earn from different courses at different universities (interesting for sure but taking this as gospel might be like believing that Nick Clegg wasn’t going to raise tuition fees). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to search for the course most likely to introduce me to a life of bling and Bollinger but here are the outcomes for 3 options:

1. 1) Politics (MA Hons) at Edinburgh University (my degree): 71% Satisfaction, Average Salary 6 months after graduation: £18,000 (though last weekend’s Sunday Times 2012 University Guide dropped it from 27th to 39th on poor teaching!)
2. 2) PPE at Oxford (David Cameron’s degree): 93% Satisfaction, Average Salary 6 months after graduation: £25,000 (same as Computer Sciences at Bristol University which our developer studied but apparently he is 3% more satisfied)
3. 3) BA in Global Cinema at Sterling University: 81% Satisfaction, Average Salary 6 months after graduation: £15,000

As I overtook yet another bus on my way to work (how is it that since the Olympics, the traffic lights seem to have gone on strike – someone privatise them – and even if i do end up furiously mopping my brow on arrival, it still seems to be possible to get to work on a bike twice as quick as on a double decker), I then passed a new army recruitment advert with an array of different soldiers on it looking like they were pursuing an array of unsoldierly careers. The advert said: “What do you want to be?”. Anything but a soldier these days I thought, given that reports indicate that 8,000 (including many serving in Afghanistan) are to lose their jobs in January with the army shrinking by about 20% come 2020.

I discussed this further this morning with Tray and Bella, 2 of WEXO’s directors who also run Careers Mentoring company, Tinker Tailor. Bella’s father was a General in the Marines and as a child I always wanted to be a soldier. Having spent a bit of time watching reruns of Spooks recently, and in the hope that I might get an invite to the new Bond premiere this month, I think in my next job I might become a Spy. In my experience, ruthless research, undercover networking and the occasional one liner often get you all sorts of offers. And I reckon I can do a pretty good Sean Connery impression too.

Robin Kennedy, WEXO Co-founder & CEO

* NB – if you’ve had a big night you can catch it later on BBC iPlayer or even better download the TuneIn Radio Pro app on your IPhone and record it (please don’t tell me you’ve still got a Blackberry, they’re for riots and the company that makes then is slowly following Nokia to the dogs.)

I’m reluctant to begin with another drawn out proclamation summarising the current state of affairs that plague the graduate job market, so how about a concise one instead.

Amidst a cloud of continued economic folly, unpaid internships and the shock horror of GCSEs grades falling for the first time in the exam’s 24-year history – one would assume the tough route is not to everyone’s taste. Unsurprisingly. Whichever side of the mobile political fence you pitch your tent, most would not argue that a healthy, competitive environment uncovers those most suitable for a career in their chosen field.

Countless articles dictate (or advise) which “buzz words” the ideal interviewee must utilise to impress, whilst evenings are elongated by carefully considered multiple-choice personality test answers. I find the importance of a candidate’s life-attitude and ambitions is often lost in the panic of being represented in the “perfect” light. Everyone is eventually bracketed into one jumbled mess. Granted this is by no means the sole fault of the employer, but a circumstance that has arisen from political and social failings over the past years.

I believe it is actually in the hands of the modern graduate to alter this saturated work environment. Take every opportunity to further yourself through being pro-active, and fervently express that desire and ambition to anyone you converse with. Much success I have so far had in my admittedly restricted career has occurred through such discussion. I am currently writing this from WEXO towers due to Robin and I connecting on musical ambition and his intrigue in how I have structured the next year for myself (naturally open to change). Another interview turned into an expressive and fruitful debate, which led to me receiving a number of useful contacts, and advise, despite not wanting to fully commit to the particular career path.

Hindsight is a wonderfully tortuous thing

I am a great believer in the notion of not beating around the bush – being direct with someone always goes a long way. On the back of that I am a 23 year-old graduate from the University of Leeds with a First in World & Popular Music. I often struggle when conjuring the drive within myself to proceed; yet I do not feel I lack ambition and my passion for Southeast Asian culture is leading me closer and closer to a move to Cambodia in order to pursue my love of journalism, music and social development. Hindsight is a wonderfully tortuous thing, thus I cannot stress enough the importance of expressing a genuine interest in your career choice and never being caught up in gaining ‘required’ experience for experience’s sake.

One anecdote I would like to conclude this blog with is how I came about my internship at Songlines music magazine, and why it is a prime example of what I have so far stated.

Songlines, Glastonbury & Persistence

I had interviewed the Cambodian-American group Dengue Fever over Skype for my dissertation in early 2011, and naturally decided to go and meet them at Glastonbury that year in the Songlines tent (West Holts stage). One thing led to another and with a beer in hand I got talking to the publisher of the magazine about who I was and why an internship at the magazine would be a fantastic opportunity.

Left at that, I went on a rather extended post-graduation holiday and returned in September to get stuck into the rest of my life. I was then based in Somerset, and emails to the magazine fell largely on disinterested eyes to my great disappointment. Unaware of the unstoppable flood of emails magazines have to deal with at the time, yet determined that this magazine was the perfect environment for me and a reason to move back to London, I decided to get archaic and send a letter. Behold! Two days and a phone call later and I was on my way to London to meet the assistant editor. I was explicitly told that this was the best move I could have ever made and immediately demonstrated my pro-active nature that is so desired within the media industry.

Networking

Nine months later and I continue to reap the rewards from the placement. Networking is a terribly over-used term, but still means so much in this industry. Expressing your related interests or perhaps even more importantly convincing someone of something new is your ticket to another opportunity. I continue to work at festivals, gigs, artist signings and events where I am able to connect with members of the public and music press. Nothing is more invigorating than going into work everyday to something you enjoy. Through working at Songlines and the opportunities that have occurred since (record labels and artist management), I have become very apt with InDesign, Photoshop, CRM/SEO management, website and social media development – none of this I would have forced myself to learn at home alone over such a short period of time. From a music perspective, the amount of new musical treats I have been introduced to is already uncountable.

I have not said anything that could be classed as a euphoric and game-changing statement, perhaps this blog even verges on common sense, but the opportunities do exist. Granted necessity dictates and money does not allow everyone to do exactly what one desires at that specific time, but this should not ever hinder ambition.

Ed Craggs

By Tom Clark

I never know what to expect of our evenings. Last night’s talks with WEXO about “Recipes for Success” were no exception: four passionate professionals from different corners of the food world gathered in a Palladian church by Centre Point, on the first true autumn evening of the year.

Marco Pierre White, in particular, subverted our expectations. It began when we met him for lunch at his new pub, The Hansom Cab. He held up his hand to illustrate opportunism. ‘See this hand’ he had said, ‘You see it one way, but there are many ways to see it. You see a palm, I see four knuckles. You need awareness of mind to recognise your luck.’

Marco knows how to tell a story. He leant in close to the microphone and spoke as if a mariner over a table in a pub, with deliberate, authoritative pauses; he took us from his dream of achieving three Michelin stars and five red knives and forks to the realisation of that dream, presenting his path as the upshot of many good twists of fate. He told of how, by pure chance, he had come across Le Gavroche as he wandered through London after missing his bus. The next day, he walked in and asked for an interview. Albert Roux took him on.

The moral? Recognise your luck, then strive for perfection and be gutsy as hell.

Niamh Shield’s Eat Like a Girl blog, with its vivid photography and affable tone, gives such a strong impression of her character that I felt I had met her before. She was every bit as affable in the flesh, totally at ease with the ad-hoc format and chatting willingly in her gentle Irish lilt.

She began her blog after a foul day at work, and soon realised it was a natural progression: ‘I’d always loved cooking food for friends, and sharing my recipes with them (too forcefully sometimes!), so with my blog, I just carried on doing that, except now I was sharing with an online community.’ The spirit of the blog is to make recipes simple and accessible.

So why don’t more people cook at home, I asked. It is partly a matter of education: ‘Children aren’t taught to cook in school any more’ she complained. ‘They’re taught English and Maths and History, but not how to prepare food.’

We need to re-acquaint ourselves with the joy of preparation, she argues. I suggest Eat Like a Girl as a first port of call.

Daren Spence, the co-founder of We Are Tea, ‘really, really, really LOVES tea’. He hardly had to say it, such was his dynamic delivery. Would-be entrepreneurs are often advised to begin with a problem, and Spence had delineated his very clearly:

‘Tea had been forgotten. There was an influx – well, I mean an invasion – of the American-style coffee shop. My colleagues were returning to the office with more and more vulgar coffee-based drinks, with sprinkles on top and cream on the top – it was like watching someone going to the cinema with a pop-corn bucket. And all I could get was a tepid cup of crumby tea in a polystyrene cup. I felt left out. I wanted to be part of their gang […] And I was frustrated that the tea industry was just sitting there, resting on its 350-year-old laurels, not doing anything about it.’

Well, Spence isn’t sitting around, and We Are Tea are fighting the tea battle, winning Great Taste Awards (‘The Oscars of fine food’) and supplying such humble outfits as Harrods and Harvey Nichols.

Simon Prockter has just launched one of the most innovative things in food. He is co-founder of Housebites, ‘gourmet take-away, delivered to your door, cooked by a local, top chef.’ (an alternative to pizzas which taste like the boxes they came in). So, which niggling frustrations engendered this great idea?

‘When you think of take-away, do you think of it as a great experience? Do you know who is cooking your meal? [...] Wouldn’t it be great if you could see your chef on the high street, and say “Hey, that’s my chef, you cooked me a great meal the other day!” And that really doesn’t happen.’ Well, for what it’s worth a big thank you to the Housebites chef Andy Oliver (Masterchef finalist), who prepared those delicious nibbles for the interval.

Simon brought speed-dating into Europe with his company SpeedDater; fingers-crossed the matchmaking will continue in the world of food.

For the full story and more inspiring events visit: www.tomaxtalks.com

Last week I was invited to attend a breakfast and ‘opinion-former panel event’ at the BIS Conference Centre. It was titled as above – apparently a coincidental duplication of the book of the same name (which I’m now struggling to ‘get in to’) by Ross Perlin – who sadly wasn’t able to attend.

If you’re interested, you can hear the whole event podcast here or read Psychology Magazine’s well written summary of what was discussed here

It was brilliant that Editorial Intelligence brought together many other parties with an interest in answering the question of how we should skill up young people to get jobs.

But I came away feeling disheartened. The panel were certainly accomplished and the talk was well attended but any opportunity to unite opinion and take real action was missed. When given the opportunity, skilling up young people to get jobs will best be achieved by Education and Inspiration on 3 levels. Sadly, the weaknesses of this event lay partly in the title and partly in the make-up of the panel.

1. EDUCATING YOUNG PEOPLE:. Simon Waugh, Executive Chairman of the National Apprenticeship Service is clearly a successful, hard working kind of guy who has probably sacrificed the pecuniary gains of executive level roles in the private sector to try and make a difference and help others in public. So no disrespect to him, but calling an event ‘Intern Nation’ and then including someone on the panel who runs an apprenticeship service only perpetuates the semantic confusion as to what an internship is – and more importantly isn’t. In case you haven’t read my rants before, here is my take on the distinction between work experience, internships and apprenticeships. Without clarification (and education), interns, ‘workies’ and apprentices will never really understand their rights and government will continue to fuel the fire with inconsistent policies:

   * Work experience: Short placements (generally 1-2 weeks) which are usually for younger people (16-18) to get a ‘taste’ of the working world and typically unpaid though we encourage companies to pay expenses.

   * Internships: 1-3 month placements, largely for undergraduates and increasingly graduates, which should be paid for legal AND moral reasons given that the company derives financial value which should be shared.

   * Apprenticeships: Apprenticeships as we see them are long term (1-2 year) paid training programmes which leave you with a vocational qualification usually in a craft or a skill. We believe they should be seen as an equal alternative to higher education. We do not believe that ‘The Apprentice’ on BBC 1 helps the classification quandry. Realistically, we would have called it ‘The Accomplice’ or more appropriately, the ‘The Attention Seeker’.

   * Jobs: What all the above should eventually result in.

2. COMPANIES NEED TO BE EDUCATED AND INCENTIVISE:. It’s a shame that someone as influential and expressive as Laurie Penny (Journalist, author and activist )seems to see the stick as the only solution to the ill justice of unpaid internships. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?” Along with many others, she is overtly focused on naming and shaming companies that might not know any better. It would be a real shame if such companies close their doors to young people all together for fear of falling foul of bureaucracy. As I explained to ‘Jilted Generation’ author, Shiv Malik, afterwards, WEXO would far rather we all focus on the carrot of incentivising companies to offer paid internships (via the STEP schemes, proposals for recouping costs of internships from VAT etc) rather than antagonise companies with the stick and choke the supply pipeline? We might also want to remind them that the average Return on Investment of a Graduate is 500% over 3 years.
3. IMPROVING EDUCATION PER SE:. It’s The education system is this country IS partly to blame for not skilling people up to get jobs. This is as much the case as it was for the chair of the event, Brian Groom of the FT, failing to break up the childish confrontation between Citibank Head of Graduate Recruitment, Gemma Lines (I hope she concedes that the City owes the country a debt of gratitude and should sponsor other internships as well as inflating their own remuneration even at this level) and Laurie Penney (in fairness it was driven by the latter). The UK’s education system has got worse and this is successively shown to be the case by numeracy and literacy statistics. Moreover, higher education (especially now that it’s paid for) should give its pupils far better careers education and include vocational experience as part of some degrees.

Strangely, the 2 panel members who were least controversial, focused least on the question in hand. This said, Martin Bright , former journalist and founder of New Deal of the Mind (who we work with on BITC’s Work Inspiration campaign) and Faye Wenman, from theTaylor Bennett Foundation, were both entertaining and informative about the good work that they do in trying to create a more meritocratic and productive society. We applaud their work (and the social enterprise, Talent to Work, that this event was ultimately launching) but look to companies and organisations with the reach and resources that we do not currently have to unite the rest of us in effecting real change.

Robin Kennedy

I’ve just started reading a new book called ‘Intern Nation‘ by Ross Perlin. Mummy bought it for me because I’m special. Actually my mother bought it for me because I imagine she’s starting to believe in what we’re trying to do at WEXO. I can’t help it that she knows where to get it or that she wanted to pay for it. And that is the issue at stake. Forgive me if I sound like a broken record (I feel like one) but there’s nothing wrong with knowing people who can get you something e.g an internship. The problem starts when other people aren’t given access to it too. The problem is compounded when a role that has a’ list of duties and work set hours’ (as per UK governmental guidance) is not paid. Legalities aside it is unethical and the biproduct is that it discriminates against other people who can’t afford to do it for free.

Despite being just 28, (as Churchill said “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you have no head.“) Perlin’s analysis is brave yet commercially aware and this guy is clearly no fool ( though he is currently writing a dictionary of a Chinese language spoken by just 6000 people). He sees value in internships, he does not want to choke the supply of them; rather he is passionate about making them work for us ALL. Here are 5 snippets that have particualarly resonated with me so far (and I’ve only just finished the preface):

1) The U.K. is apparently 5 years behind the U.S. in its use of internships but Perlin warns of what internships could become: “Until just a few decades ago, the word [internship] referred almost exclusively to a particular period of hands-on apprenticeship in the medical profession… Today…probably… between 1 and 2 million people participate in internships each year in the U.S…. ‘The rise of the internship is the market’s finding the workaround to government regulations, evidence of the tendency of liberty to grow up like grass in the cracks of sidewalks”.

2) Perhaps the worst example of how internships can be exploited: “Required by the school to take ‘a social internship’, two girls in the Netherlands, aged fourteen and fifteen, intern as prostitutes in the local red light district”

3) Who is to blame? “All of us – employers, parents schools, government agencies, and interns themselves – are complicit [albeit subconsciously] in the devauing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the internet boom.”

4) Hope: Perlin sees his book as “a step towards sanity and towards justice”. In a recent Guardian review, Andy Beckett lamented that things could get worse before they get better. In the Times, Kaya Burgess quoted Intern Aware and Interns Anonymous as saying there is a limit to how much they can fight the system. We do not believe that the system needs fighting. There are a multitude of well mentored, paid internships on offer to the best candidates in the UK and we like to think a lot of them are on WEXO. As ever, what we need to do is work together to make sure that there are reasons for companies to offer even more of them.

I look forward to updating you. The problem is I always seem to start books in earnest but then start others and take ages to finish them. Amongst others, I’m also currently reading ‘The Big Short‘ by Michael Lewis and Keith Richards’ autobiography. Sorry Mum, but both are infinitely more entertaining and I suspect at least one of them contains some pertinent careers advice to boot.

Robin Kennedy. Co-Founder, WEXO