RIGHTSTER: How I Made It In Digital Media…



How I Made It In Digital Media

How I Made It In Digital Media

We are very excited here at WEXO Towers about our next WEXO TV event on Tuesday 6th November, “How I Made It In Digital Media” and are pleased to see so many applications coming in (please be patient while we proces them all). For those of you that have been reading our recent blogs, we strongly believe that the internet economy holds the solution to both UK Plc’s economic impasse and youth unemployment. According to BCG the internet accounts for 8.3% if the UK economy (£121Bn in 2010). 76% of people would consider giving up chocolate for an entire year in order to maintain their Internet access (see recent blog)! For those of you that want are still attracted to the traditional employment options like PR, marketing, advertising, fashion, music, investment banking, etc Rightster and other digital media companies offer opportunities in all these areas and as these multiply so the more traditional roles will decline. Make sure you are on the right side of the fence…

This event takes a slightly different format to our previous showings (How I Made It in Fashion 1 & 2, How I Made It In Advertising and How I Made It in Food!). This time round, we have a sponsor in innovative new digital media company, Rightster, who are using the event as part of their Recruitment campaign to find the some of the UK’s sharpest and savviest graduates and undergrads. There will be opportunities for 10 or so Graduate Jobs starting in January and also internships and further roles starting in the Summer of 2013. See here to find out more about the roles on offer and to apply to come along.

The event will feature key players from some of the biggest names in Digital Media including The Guardian, ITV and cricinfo.com. Successful applicants will be able to hear them talk briefly about how they ‘made it’ and then ask pre-polled questions followed by drinks at the renowned Adam Street Private Members Club.

So what is Rightster?

Rightster is a cloud-based software and services company that simplifies the distribution, marketing and monetisation of live and on demand video content. They work with a whole host of exciting names including The British Fashion Council, The Guardian, ITN and ELLE. Here’s Founder and CEO, Charlie Muirhead talking about it at a recent MIPCOM industry event in Cannes:

Here’s Founder and CEO, Charlie Muirhead talking about it at a recent MIPCOM industry event in Cannes:



Next week we will be publishing the biographies of the 5 confirmed panel members…

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy?



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.)

My WEXO Experience: The London 2012 Olympics with UPS



I had previously been working in an office job in Slough and was looking for a new challenge. I wanted a role which involved lots of interaction with different people and allowed me to move about rather than being stuck in an office all day. My friend saw the Olympics DVLM role on the WEXO website and advised this would be right up my street. I have currently only been in the role for 2 weeks but have already had some great experiences.

I am based in the Olympic village in Stratford which is currently still a building site as the village looks to be completed in early April. However the buildings are already erected and thus the site already looks very impressive. Finishing touches are being put on the surrounding land as trees are installed and rooms are being furnished and decorated. It is a refreshing change to travel into Stratford everyday, an area completely rejuvenated by the Olympics, soaking up the atmosphere of Westfield and the buzz of the Olympic spirit at the athletes’ village. This is enough to get me motivated for work every day on its own!

The role itself has currently involved overseeing operations of the site. The main challenge of this so far has been to motivate and gain the respect of workers who are the same age as me or older and more experienced. I have found the best way to do this is to lead by example and muck in, as well as showing them respect by asking them for the best advice on how to complete a task.

The UPS Olympics team is based in Canary Wharf and I have also had the chance to visit the offices here and partake in training. The highlight of this was the staff meeting held recently. This was a chance to meet really important people responsible at the highest level for logistics at the Olympics. Even though many people are employed by different companies, there is a real sense of one team spirit as everyone is excited to pull together and deliver the best Olympics possible for London! Everyone is really down to earth and a lot of fun, interested in you and your story, no matter how high a level they operate at! We all went out afterwards around Canary Wharf for a couple of drinks and to exchange stories.

I envisage my role evolving a lot in the coming months as the building on the site is completed and athletes start to arrive, which is really exciting as I am not sure what challenges and surprises will be around the corner. However it is great to know that whatever happens there is a whole team of people behind me willing to help any way they can!

Matthew Hill

My WEXO Experience: Travel PR at Wedge & Wildlife



After graduating from Newcastle University in the summer, I was unsure of what route to go down. After a few months of job hunting, where unimaginative and mundane jobs appeared to be my only option and numerous rejections were coming my way, I was starting to lose motivation and feel very disheartened. Thankfully I came across Wexo and I was immediately attracted to the fact that the internships they offered were with small, unique and quirky companies. These are the type I aspire to but are often overlooked when huge graduate schemes are thrown at you. Wexo really tried to get at insight into my strengths and preferences in order to focus on what I would be most suited to, so that I would end up doing something I really enjoyed. Unlike many other recruitment companies they really care and focus on you, giving you a lot of time and thought.

Wexo found me a month long internship in travel PR working at a small, exciting and unconventional company called Wedge and Wildlife. As I was living in Oxfordshire at the time, I was able to work from home, allowing me to save money. I spent my time writing spiels for their website about a number of locations across Africa. I had around 30 locations to describe, consisting of beach, safari, wine land, battlefield and fly/drive trips. Not only did this allow me to dream about going to incredible five star lodges, but also improved my writing, vocabulary, research skills and allowed me to get an idea of what a job in travel PR would be like. It also improved my time management and organisational skills and gave me more experience at working to a deadline. Originally I had never considered working in travel PR; however the internship helped me realise that it is something to think seriously about. I could not have enjoyed the internship more and my time there would not have been possible without Wexo!

Chekkie

My WEXO Experience: Fever Tree…



The world of premium spirits is a vast, hissing and simmering cauldron of flavour. Every drink aims to push the boundaries on the senses, to breach the comforting brackets of familiarity – transforming that sip of gin into synaesthesia, where taste, smell and the feel of liquid on the tongue are each carefully crafted components of an overall EXPERIENCE. Hundreds of Pop-up drink fairs and conventions are erected across the country – thousands across the globe – to compare, contrast and blend new experiences from around the world. The company I would work with for three months straight after I left University was a drinks company, but their product was non-alcoholic. It was a mixer – something to blend these weird and wonderful flavours with. The twist: they were all-natural mixers, with an ethos hell-bent on exposing and toppling a tonic market saturated with artificially sweetened, flavoured and branded products.

My internship began with a tip-off from WEXO’s Robin who notified me that a new, exciting opportunity had appeared and that it may be of interest to me. After having a quick look over the internship details, I decided that this was exactly the something that I had been looking for –the chance to try something new.,to throw myself into an area that I was interested in, but knew little about and to dabble in something that would seriously benefit my critically experience-malnourished CV…

After an interview and a weekend excursion to the unfamiliar realm of London, I was called by Tom – Fever-Tree’s Sales Manager – who alerted me that I had been accepted and my internship would begin immediately. I was to be working with him in what the drinks industry refers to as the ‘On-Trade’, meaning individual or collective premises that worked outside of main grocery channels, such as bars, pubs, clubs and hotels. I would be visiting these venues alone, garnering specific information on each ‘account’, gathering feedback and finding out the best ways in which the product could grow in conjunction with the account’s consumer-base, geographical region and, if applicable, its group.

An ‘account’, I soon learned, very rarely existed as an individually licensed, autonomous entity. A pub would tend to belong to a ‘group’ or even a large, multinational brewer. My three months, Tom announced, would predominantly consist of travelling to and visiting a colossal amount of groups and businesses, while he constantly assessed me. The path to Sales-Mecca would, I soon learned, consist of episodic, enriching periods of guidance and confidence-nurturing from my mentor, but more often than not would involve hurling me repeatedly into volatile situations and watching how I dealt with it, possibly with a very small morsel of sadistic satisfaction.

Although horrifically nerve-wracking during the first few weeks this method allowed me to develop a certain skill-set desperately necessary in a Sales role: thinking on your toes and making the most of the resources available to you. It was initially a terrifying experience; I’d be walking into a pub or restaurant, asking for the bar manager above the hubbub (this would instantly turn a few heads in my direction – the man feeding his dog cold chips at the table closest would look up and grimace at me as I stood there shivering in my salesperson shirt and chinos), waiting a good five minutes whilst sweat began to ooze out of my hands and armpits until they came over and grasped my clammy palm, ready hear my delivery. “Hello!”, I would say, “I’m Will from Fever-Tree”. That was my planned opening, the rest would hopefully follow.

Yet grudgingly I began to revel in this method of learning and within two weeks I was allowed to set out alone “in the field” with a suitcase full of products, botanicals and a Salesman swagger. Within three weeks I was comfortably “cold-calling” – the method of entering an alien premises, attempting with your Fever-Tree chat and a favourable spread of the product in an ancient cocktail magazine to strum the apathetic strings of the Manager’s heart until Tonic-induced ecstasy is splayed upon his business plan. All this while trying to retain that rehearsed, comforting and assuring, “I’m-totally-in-charge-look-into-my-dark-confident-pupils”, rock-steady, if a tad unnerving, Sales-stare. Tom, my boss, did it on cue. He’d walk proudly into premises and come out the same upbeat, down to earth fellow as if all he had received inside was a gut-warming pat on the back. Inside the pub or restaurant his demeanour would quickly change and a clearly researched and idealistic figure emerged, at once comforting the client and finding ways to push buttons and tap into an interest he or she didn’t realise they had in a product they’d never heard about. It took me a few months of repeatedly cold-calling venues to really get the gist of it.

Sales is all about communication. Once you have this fundamental nailed down, skills can be embedded and your persona can be polished. What I took away from Fever-Tree was a confidence I know I wouldn’t have developed unless I had been thrown headfirst into the deep-end, and I desperately urge anyone who hasn’t to do so immediately. In the end I chose not to continue on at my internship because it was ultimately an area of expertise that wasn’t me. That said, it has genuinely been one of the most fulfilling, eye-opening and fun experiences that I have ever had. I would recommend the company to anyone who genuinely has a passion for the drinks industry and communicating to the ocan of people within it. The people were immense, and I’d like to thank everyone at Fever-Tree for the chance to work at one of the most professional and inspiring workplaces in the UK. In particular I’d like to thank Tom Armstrong who was a genuine mentor to me, who I looked up to a great deal and who made the experience just that bit more special. I also learned a lot I’m sure!

William Martin

Recipes for Success – How I Made it in Food



By Tom Clark

WEXO TV footage coming soon…

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

My WEXO Experience: Interning at Housebites.com



Having worked in various catering jobs from chalet cook to restaurant chef in the four years since I left university I knew two things – I didn’t want to work in a kitchen, but I did want to work in the food industry somehow. So a friend of mine who had got an internship suggested signing up to WEXO.

Within a week I had two interview offers and was offered an internship with ‘housebites’ a very small Internet start-up. Housebites is a new way of ordering high quality takeaway food from chefs in your local area. At the moment we haven’t even launched yet but watch this space.

As the company is so young and small, I am involved in many different aspects of the operation but my main role is as the ‘community manager’ – which at the moment consists of recruiting our chefs for when we get up and running. Having absolutely no business experience or knowledge, my time at Housebites has been invaluable, especially as the head of the company is a highly experienced internet entrepreneur and has been very kind and patient in including me in many aspects of starting an internet company. I especially enjoy the variety of working in such a small team and no two days are ever the same. It’s also great to have met so many talented and passionate chefs and just nattering about food all day – right up my street!

I feel lucky to have been here at the start of what I hope will soon become a household name. My internship comes to an end at the end of July, and I really hope that Housebites will ask me to stay on as the company launches and begins to grow. I really can’t thank WEXO enough for the fantastic service that they are providing for all of the people like me who don’t really know exactly what it is that they want to do or who can’t find a ‘real’ job in this tough market. I wish them all the best in the future.

Tom Gurney

Another day in the office… The PM’s office…



I was most appreciative to have been invited in to No. 10 today to air WEXO’s views on youth unemployment…


1) What it’s like going to No. 10?
2) What was discussed?
3) What can be acheived?


1. WHAT’S IT LIKE GOING TO NO. 10?

If truth be told, I was a little apprehensive (a fair reminder of how many of you feel, when invited in for interviews). On arrival at Westminster, I manoeuvred my way through a throng of people alongside the Cenotaph and crisply announced that I was ‘here for a meeting at No. 10′. My credentials and bags checked, I strode on down Downing Street half expecting to bump into David (PM’s Question Time and a defence of GDP growth beckoned) or at least Nick Robinson (presumably contemplating whether Obama was born in America) but calm was all around.

Not sure what the protocol was, I rang the bell alongside the door which was instantly opened by an official looking gentleman who asked me to leave my phone in one of the cubby holes (Slot ’007′ was inauspiciously unoccupied but I plumped for it). I then obligingly took a seat below a long and winding staircase which conjured up visions of an seemingly ‘home-alone’ PM/Hugh Grant dancing down it.

2. WHAT WAS DISCUSSED?

My host, an assertive yet accommodating senior policy adviser with a testing mandate (Education, Welfare and Pensions), shortly emerged and there followed a concise yet considered exchange of views which hinged on ‘supply versus demand’, budgetary pressures and the role of government. Youth unemployment it seems is shortly to be moved up the agenda and it was encouraging that players like ourselves were to be consulted in plotting its demise.

One of the key concerns seemed not to be the apparent difference of opinion between DC and NC on access to work experience (understandably – I believe the two can be aligned: sharp elbows are fine so long as everyone knows where the starting line is); rather it was the current reluctance of companies to back ‘first timers’ in lieu of ‘tried and tested’ recruits. Youth unemployment is hovering around the 1m mark. We reflected on how depressing this was when recent figures suggest that graduates (at least) offer a 500% Return On Investment (ROI) over 3 years – adding over £1Bn of value to the UK economy last year.

On the disclosure that we had previously tried to form an ‘Internships Alliance’, it was inferred that if we wanted to assemble some of the key players in this space, government advisers and representatives from BIS would be happy to invite us in to consider our suggestions. This I see as the ‘Big Society’ in action. I sensed that although the government does not see merit in state intervention, it could see value in working WITH select partners in the public and private sector to INSPIRE and INCENTIVISE (corporate) society at large to effect change (investing in an otherwise ‘lost generation’). It does not want to be seen as a ‘bully pulpit’ but it does perhaps acknowledge that it is best placed to showcase good practice and then ‘spread the word’?

Otherwise, the key issues that we touched on were:

* NETWORKING v NEPOTISM: WEXO doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with using your network to get a job / work experience (it’s a useful skill for the working world) so long as other people are presented with the means to be considered too (and the opportunity goes to the most suitable candidate based on merit). Our technology encourages this by ranking and matching candidates to opportunities.

* SMEs: Many large companies already offer structured work experience and internship programs, but we believe the government should focus on enthusing / incentivising small and medium-sized businesses to take young people on (we have historically suggested recouping costs from VAT hike?). It is these SMEs that represent the backbone of the British economy (60% of GDP?) and which we (and other potential Internships Alliance lobby members) particularly represent. WEXO offers companies a platform to promote opportunities democratically and low maintenance cost, efficient schemes (via STEP and endorsed by Boris Johnson) to pay interns fairly.

* WORK EXPERIENCE V INTERNSHIPS: There is a clear distinction between ‘work experience’ and ‘internships‘ and this is critical in the ‘unpaid’ debate. We encourage companies to offer work experience (unpaid but preferably with expenses covered) for periods of up to 2 weeks. Thereafter (when the value generated exceeds that which is which is earned), we suggest companies offer paid internships for anything up to 3 months. For us, this is more a moral issue than a legal one (Blog here). After 3 months we suggest companies either offer people a job or let them get on with their job search. Otherwise they get stuck in the ‘internship trap’. Although WEXO is clear that work experience, apprenticeships and internships are totally different entities (based on duration, who applies, and remuneration or who derives value), the public at large might not be and so consideration needs to be given to this. Furthermore, we see the need for clarity on interns being entitled to National Minimum Wage, apprentices being entitled to £2.50 an hour and job seekers being allowed to do work experience for up to 2 months on JSA (Job Seekers Allowance).

* CAREERS ADVICE: Against a backdrop of record youth unemployment, a recent Ofsted survey suggested that one in three schools are failing to give good advice to students about future career prospects. A report by Deloitte said that 95% of young people want employers to be more involved in providing guidance about careers citing that they feel ‘bewildered’ and ‘uninformed’ by the career choices on offer. We would encourage government to back inspirational careers guidance to the like of the ‘How I Made It in…’ Events involving executives from the front line of their industries as featured on WEXO tv.

* FUNDING: As per our blog at the time, in the budget, George Osborne committed to investing in 4 times as many 8 week work experience placements as previously for 18-21 year olds. The scheme, administered by Job Centre Plus allows those doing so to collect JSA (Job Searchers Allowance). It’s a reasonably well conceived initiative but it doesn’t address the issue of finding rewarding work experience. “As George pointed out, the problem is that only 1 in 10 companies in the UK offer work experience as opposed to 1 in 4 in Germany. If George wants to see a return on his recent investment he needs to address both sides of the equation”. So funding for this and the £180m ‘Apprenticeships’ packages should address supply of opportunities as well as demand.

3) WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED?

With the above in mind, WEXO is excited about the prospect of working with the powers-that-be to help educate companies and incentivise them to recruit and invest in young people who are better informed.

* PROBABLE OUTCOME: At the very least, we feel sure that the government will honour its offer to listen to, acknowledge and where possible, address, the consensus suggestions of the key players in this space. We trust that this will not be a repeat of the unfulfilled promises of 3 years ago when we met the Panel for Fair Access to the Professions and offered to help with The Graduate Talent Pool.

* POSSIBLE OUTCOME: Even if say just SMEs (and especially ‘STEM’ [Science, Technology Engineering and Maths] companies – the future?) could recoup the costs of one 3 month internship each from VAT at National Minimum Wage (~£220 a week), it would help them show commitment to the managers of tomorrow? Instead of giving £15m worth of funding directly to the Higher Education Authorities – HEFCE (which was largely left unspent?) – we would suggest that the government ‘atones’ itself for the recent tuition fee hikes (which we actually support) and invests some of the proceeds in subsidies that public-private sector partnerships (including HEFCE) can promote to companies that are desperate to take on young people. Perhaps funding could come from the new £50m ‘Growth and Innovation Fund’? We believe that given the ROI generated by graduates any such initiative would be cost-neutral at worst.

* PREFERRED OUTCOME: WEXO was recently a member of two syndicates that spent a considerable amount of time, money and energy submitting tenders (and being shortlisted) for grants to supply work experience and Internships across London. With the funding then being clawed back from the LDA, the projects were subsequently abandoned. We acknowledge that the government would rather let the market decide who the winners are (and we are happy to operate on this basis) but what IF this government decided that it would like to back responsible corporate and social enterprises (as well as banks) and actually INVEST in the next generation through performance related, service provision grants to the like of the ones discussed above? A little could go a long way to get the motor running and generating decent GDP growth.

My thanks for the opportunity.

Robin Kennedy. Co-Founder, WEXO

PRESS COMMENT





*** PRESS COMMENT: WEXO invites government to help make “It’s not who you know, it’s who you are” a reality ***

5th April 2011: WEXO (Work Experience Online) welcomes this morning’s news that the government is to focus on reversing the growing culture of unpaid internships as part of its social mobility scheme. The announcement that Nick Clegg will champion this initiative is encouraging. WEXO invites the government to actualise its commitment to private/public sector partnerships and work with it to tackle these issues head on.

Robin Kennedy, Co-founder and CEO of WEXO said: “In a difficult economy, internships have started to replace graduate schemes in small businesses as a ‘first job’ vehicle. For some time now, we’ve been trying to foster a meritocratic culture that democratises access to work experience and internships using the internet. I welcome today’s announcements and look forward to hearing more but this space is fraught with sensitivities. We don’t need rhetoric and policy; what we need is to educate and incentivise companies to take on the best people and pay them fairly. I’d be delighted to work with the government to this end.”

WEXO has teamed up with STEP to make it easier for companies to find the best interns. STEP has already successfully operated the London Innovation Placement Programme and its own Graduate STEP Scheme with The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS). Both schemes, which WEXO has worked with STEP on, have proved successful in providing a cost effective solution that helps companies find first class interns who in return receive an appropriate level of remuneration (which is the equivalent of at least the national minimum wage) for their hard work. One of WEXO’s recent proposals was that companies should be able to recoup the costs of paying interns from this year’s VAT increase.

In an earlier release, Sir Stuart Rose, former Chairman of Marks & Spencer and founder of BITC initiative ‘Work Inspiration’, said: “I’m a big believer in what WEXO is doing to help get students and graduates working again. By utilising the power of the internet, they are helping match talent to exciting opportunities.”

~ENDS~

Notes to editors:

WEXO (www.wexo.co.uk) is a matchmaking network exciting work experience, internships and jobs. WEXO’s technology now allows companies to rank and sort applications and it has already developed a strong client list of over 500 companies including Sony Music, Armani and Working Title as well as many start-ups, charities and SMEs. WEXO has been featured on BBC Television News and was a finalist for the 2009 LSE Recruitment Awards in the ‘Most Innovative Use of Technology’ category. More recently the company has launched ‘WEXO tv’ to help inspire and educate people about different industries. The company was founded in 2007 by ex-investment banker Robin Kennedy and London ‘fixer’ Harry Becher. The platform was built with seed funding and the company generates revenue from membership fees, search fees and advertising.

Step (www.step.org.uk) has over 10 years of experience in developing some of the UK’s most innovative and well regarded placement programmes. Quoted as a model of good practice by the Alan Milburn-chaired Panel on Fair Access, Step are working directly with the Department of Business to make these opportunities a reality.

For more information contact Robin Kennedy on info@wexo.co.uk or by calling: +44 (0) 203 287 7644


My WEXO Experience: Interning at Skimlinks



My internship with Skimlinks was my first taste of paid work experience. Every day at Skimlinks represented a new learning curve, all in the company of a very friendly team. When I first started, my colleagues were always willing to help me out and were open to answering all my questions. The company has a very open culture and everything (good or bad news) is shared with the employees. One of the best parts about working here is that the founders of the company are easily approachable.

In particular, I’ve loved coming into work on Fridays. On Fridays, Spotify cranks out great music all morning and then in the evening we all typically all go for a round of drinks at a nearby pub. The company is very conveniently located at Old Street, one of the best London locations for clubbing or going to a pub after work. The Skimlinks Christmas party was an experience in itself! Interns are also welcomed with a social evening of chats and drinks, which makes for a truly great experience.

I didn’t even notice how fast the time flew by and I’m nearly at the end of my internship. As a small company, the work environment is exciting but also quite relaxed; it feels very different to that of a big company. The work ethic at Skimlinks is strong, but of course there’s an element of fun to what we do.

WEXO does a great job arranging these kinds of internships. And, yes, thanks to the STEP program the internship allowance comes tax free! No complaints here.

Sourav Kumar

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