Regarding my career direction I’ve always felt lucky in that I realised early on that I wanted to work in some capacity within the music industry. With this in mind I was acutely aware that in order to make myself more attractive to employers I needed to build a strong CV of work experience and internship placements, something I did at a number of companies invested in the creative field (Remedy TV, FRUKT Music Intelligence, Bella Union, Warner Bros. Records). From a music television production company to both independent and major record labels I gained a strong knowledge of how different areas of the industry operated.

However, it wasn’t until I saw an internship advertised on WEXO that I really felt that I’d found the role that would directly lead me into the career line I wished to follow – that of music syncing and licensing. Whilst there were a number of outstanding opportunities advertised on the website it was the fantastic position as a music intern at Platinum Rye Entertainment that I hoped to gain. The company is the world’s largest broker of celebrity and recording artist talent for ad campaigns and PR events with recent campaigns including both Friendly Fires and Bat For Lashes for Gucci, The Beatles for Hugo Boss and the recent Lucozade advertisements that have been the talk of the town! I was therefore eager to apply as there really would be no greater education in this sector…

Having submitted my profile I was fortunate enough to be asked to interview with the two UK Directors of Music, following which I learnt I had been offered the role and I was elated! From the get-go I felt like a valued member of the team and was immediately involved in a range of tasks – from music searches to administrative responsibilities I felt that I was gaining the most invaluable experience I could have hoped for.

It’s safe to say that without the WEXO team and and the STEP scheme (which paid me a training allowance commensurate with National Minimum Wage) I would never have had this opportunity to work at such a great company that has hands down provided the best working environment I’ve ever experienced. It even looks like I might be staying here a bit longer…

Tara Lynch

I’m part-way through my internship at Sipsmith Independent Spirits, where I’m devising a digital marketing strategy to support the company’s expansion.

Sipsmith is a very idiosyncratic company, with a brand of humour as distinctive as the brand itself. I’ve had no difficulty in picking up the punch lines. Of course, a measure of contentment is laughter. Not only do I chortle regularly, but I’m also whistling as I work. I feel welcome here.

This hasn’t felt like an internship. I have a huge amount of autonomy. Sipsmith relies on the initiative and self-motivation of its people. There isn’t time for nannying interns, that’s for sure, but I can always ask a question. The answer’s always forthcoming.

I haven’t worked in marketing before, so I’ve had to brush up on terminology and methods. It took me a while to adjust to strategic thinking, being more used to creative and academic working methods. However, I feel I understand what I’m doing now, what I’m trying to achieve and how this will, ultimately, help the company. My input is useful, and it’s rewarding to know this.

I wouldn’t have been able to do this internship without payment (using the STEP programme that WEXO promotes) – and quite rightly too. Interns should be paid for good work.

John Garden

“Be passionate, be opinionated and always be a problem-solver“. So said our panel at last night’s filmed careers event and launch of WEXO TV, ‘How I Made it in Advertising‘. We were lucky enough to get an intimate and entertaining careers chat from five pros in the advertising world, jam-packed with practical advice and anecdotal lessons. The Tabernacle in Notting Hill hosted our evening in its beautiful and embellished theatre.

On the panel sat Julian Diment (Carphone Warehouse), Rebecca Robins (Interbrand), Nick Foster (T-Mobile), Tanya Hamilton-Smith (JWT) and Robin Garton (MBA). Collectively they’ve worked for and with the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis, Tesco, Orange, Andrex and Reuters. A pretty impressive but instantly likeable bunch, if we ever met one.

Our audience consisted of everyone from LSE undergraduates, Masters students and careers advisers for schoolchildren to keen WEXO members who’d travelled from as far as Cardiff! Needless to say the atmosphere in the Tabernacle was rather electric, with guests in the running to win a work’s week experience in advertising particularly excited. To begin, each of our speakers zipped us through their background, and how they found themselves on their current career paths. A few central themes arose, which anyone looking to delve into the advertising should consider noting. Pens at the ready:

1. Follow your instincts. When it comes to joining a team, go with people you instantly feel you can gel with. If you’re pretending to be someone you’re not, it’ll show in no time.
2. Relationships are key. Care about the people and brands you work for. Not in a sentimental sense, but in terms of genuinely wanting to push forward their agenda. Those relationships will form the core of your contact base in time.
3. Do your research. Know the brands or companies you aspire to work with, before you find yourself in that interview you worked so hard to nab. With LinkedIn, Facebook and Google at your disposal, any failure to read up will tend to reflect badly on your preparation.
4. Don’t be a slave to the numbers. When you’ve got an idea in a creative position, it’s vital to balance both your own gut feeling and the anticipated demand from market research. You’ll sell yourself short by only responding to one or the other.

After learning how each speaker ‘made it’ in advertising on their own paths we then enjoyed the Q&A session. While I tweeted furiously throughout, our audience came through with questions on the prevalence of social media, importance of corporate social responsibility and recommended academic paths to advertising jobs.

Some particular crackers included a question on whether the panel members would have handled the John Lewis ‘freezing dog’ Christmas ad differently and a personal question about why so few of the panel seemed to be on Twitter themselves! These two are in fact our winning questions for the event: in our promo we had advertised a week’s work experience and subscription (worth £800) to The Reel. We’re happy to announce that Debra Sherman and Lucy Hine are our two winners, and more details will be coming their way today. Well done!

As the Q&A went on, similar themes started to crop up while the panel used stories of their own experiences to illustrate their points. It was particularly interesting to hear about Garton’s adventurous approach to adverts when contrasted with Hamilton-Smith’s self-described ’safe’ angle. Knowing we were sat with one of the brains behind Orange Wednesdays (Diment) was also impressive and inspirational.

All in all, the gist seemed to be: use your skills, resources and creativity to push yourself towards the department you’d work best in. Although the advertising industry is so varied, finding oneself in the wrong area could be disastrous and personally unfulfilling.

WEXO Members can watch the entire event on WEXO TV here or break it down into clips of the Q&As.

Tshepo Mokoena

On Tuesday 8th February we’ll be holding the first of our ‘How I Made It’ official Q&A careers events intended to introduce students, graduates and young professionals to different opportunities and industries in the working world.

We’ll be kicking off with “How I Made It In Advertising: Brands, the Big 4 and beyond…” at 6.30pm on Tuesday 8th February at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill, London – where Jimi Hendrix played his last gig.

WEXO is all about privileged access and we will be featuring a panel of advertising executives who have spent time at the world’s four biggest advertising groups: WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and Interpublic as well as ITV, Orange and Dunhill.

It will follow a BBC Question Time format focusing on pre-polled questions including: “What impact is social media having on the advertising industry?”,“What opportunities are available?” and “Why have some campaigns been so successful?”. There will be a ‘money can’t buy’ prize for the best question which you can submit when you register…

We’re continually hearing that you don’t know enough about the working world to make informed decisions so we’re trying to give you the inside story direct from the people that hold the roles you might be best suited to. Watch this space for the next events, let us know what industries you’d like to hear about below or sign up for the event now.

The idea sprang from the “How I Made it in Fashion” event that WEXO co-hosted with the LSE Fashion Society in November 2010. It featured a panel including the Retail Editor of Vogue, Emily Zak, Chloe Lonsdale, Founder of MiH Jeans and the fashion journalist, Kinvara Balfour. The event was oversubscribed and substantiated the view that young people are seeking more pertinent careers advice. 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.

The problem we’re seeing daily is that students and graduates don’t always understand the roles on offer and so aren’t necessarily focusing on the ones that they’re best cut out for. This is only exaggerated by a difficult job market. For every 2 people we place there are 8 that we don’t. We’re trying to give all 10 of you the inside story direct from the people that hold the roles you might be best suited to.

There’s always been material available from careers advisers and universities but by filming these events we’re hoping to build up an interesting online archive of enlightening content that will help you understand the career you deserve.

Robin Kennedy

Photos courtesy of Chu Ting Ng at The Qualifiedblog.

Often the majority of graduates struggle to find suitable internships or work experience placements straight out of university: this was my task. Luckily my career path was pretty clear to me, since I was keen to pursue a career in marketing.

After graduating from University in 2008 with a psychology degree and a Masters in marketing, I started searching for marketing internship roles which would help me to develop new skills. I spent hours calling companies, sending CVs, searching on Google and joining job agencies, which became both exhausting and frustrating. After numerous attempts and disappointing results, I started to worry about my future. My dedication and desire to find an internship was starting to wear off. I later spoke to a friend who introduced me to WEXO.

He revealed that his girlfriend had used it to find work and I thought to myself “why not?”. So I paid the £10 fee and applied for several companies. Within less than a week I’d received an email from a fashion company called Chris & Tibor.

Finally I was getting somewhere! I went for an interview and was offered the job. Working for Chris & Tibor was incredible. I felt right at home with people who were genuinely nice and allowed me to express myself. Plus, the internship was a hands-on experience: I was often given different responsibilities and the chance to do diverse roles, from online marketing research to collecting relevant data for office use. Everything about the internship was marketing-related, and gave me a realistic preview of my field of interest.

Working for Chris & Tibor helped me to acquire the skills and knowledge which are important for everyday work. I got the chance to experience the different roles that are involved in marketing and feel that I am better prepared to enter the world of work after this experience. This internship is one element of my overall success and I would describe it to other students as rewarding.

Thanks to WEXO I was able to find the role: without them I would most likely still be phoning companies, sending CVs and joining job agencies with zero results. I would highly recommended WEXO because you can get firsthand experience within companies, complete with rewarding responsibilities and challenges. The experience was a thrill and also satisfying.

Jadeed Boyi

Internships, internships, internships: At my university that’s all anyone seems to talk about, and this time last year it was starting to freak me out!

You see, at the London School of Economics I am surrounded by lots of really clever economists and finance geniuses, not to mention those who study law or management. These are the lucky few who have their career paths laid out in front of them; the ones we give evils to across the library floor, the ones who have it all too easy!

‘But what about the rest of us’, we chant in chorus, ‘what hope is there for us?’

Well today I am here to tell you not to panic. There are in fact a huge number of internship opportunities out there for people just like you and I in a wide variety of industries and roles, two of which I would like to share my experience of.

During the past year I have been working as an intern one day a week at the one and only WEXO, looking at ways to develop their student marketing campaigns. This has given me a great insight into what it’s like to work for a growing start-up and the sort of responsibility this entails.

There are loads of advantages to working for a small firm, particularly as an intern. Because there are fewer employees than in a big corporation you get much more of an overview of how the whole company runs, and hopefully get to help out with lots of different aspects of the firm. This is a fantastic opportunity if you are not sure what role you see yourself doing in future (which let’s face it, most of us don’t). The breadth of experience available at small firms is invaluable and I believe there is a huge amount of satisfaction in seeing your ideas come to life.

It’s a steep learning curve and you may feel like you’re being thrown in at the deep end at first, but I believe it is definitely the best way to learn. From a social perspective, working at a small start-up is usually a lot of fun and more laid-back than may be the case at some of the bigger firms. Moreover the people you work with are the sort of people who are really entrepreneurial and full of great ideas. This is what I really love about being part of the super cool WEXO family.

On the other side of the coin, you have the ‘Big Guys’. These are the firms with thousands of employees, those annoyingly long application forms and really structured internship schemes. I have to be honest the combination of these factors was rather off-putting for me; I was intimidated to approach any of the big firms like L’Oreal and Procter and Gamble because I felt like a very small fish in a very big pond!

I finally plucked up the courage to send my application off to P&G on the day of the deadline and if I’m honest I didn’t expect a response. However, it turns out the work I had been doing at WEXO was pretty interesting to the ‘Big Guys’ and I was fortunate to be offered a summer internship working in Sales at P&G.

This was a fantastic experience and I was able to learn a huge amount about the world of business, how to persuasively present my ideas and how to effectively manage a group of people as well as sales skills relevant to my role. I met some great people at P&G and made some excellent contacts. I’m not going pull the wool over your eyes however: there were some really long days, and the work was challenging but fortunately there were lots of people to help me through and teach me the ropes. It was great to be able to work so closely with some really knowledgeable people.

I truly believe that getting yourself an internship is an invaluable career opportunity. For me personally, it is really a case of: ‘You don’t realise just how much you don’t know until you’ve done one!’ I truly feel in a much stronger position applying to jobs now than I would have been without these experiences on my CV. Of course for employers, the fact that you have gone out there and used your free time to learn new skills and take an interest in the world of work is a big tick in their box!

Whether you chose to intern at a small start-up or a big corporation is a personal preference. Both offer fantastic opportunities to learn and personally develop your own skills and confidence. If you can, try both. You can never have too much experience! WEXO have some amazing opportunities on their site that I would definitely advise applying for. Equally you should have a look at some corporate schemes and really work out what you feel suits you best.

There really are so many opportunities out there for people just like you and me.
Now it’s up to you to make them your own!

Emma Roberts

Upon graduating with a degree in Management Studies from the University of Nottingham in July and waiting until the new year to travel and start my graduate job as an Executive Management Trainee at HSBC the following September, I had a fair bit of time to do something challenging.

I was fortunate enough to find out about GroupSpaces.com as a member of SIFE Nottingham at university. When I saw they were about to launch an aggressive roll-out to UK student groups – a market I was very familiar with – I jumped at the opportunity to be part of such a promising young Web 2.0 start-up. GroupSpaces was founded by two students back in 2007, and is working wonders at helping real-world groups like student clubs and societies manage themselves online. The company is based in Old Street, London – an area quickly becoming known as ‘Silicon Roundabout’ for breeding innovative internet companies such as TweetDeck, Last.fm and of course, GroupSpaces! Only a few weeks into my role and GroupSpaces were lauded by The Telegraph as one of the “Top 10 European Technology Companies to Watch” after just securing $1.3 million of investment.

My internship would see me work alongside the UK Marketing Manager (and also CEO/co-founder) to scale up the UK student userbase. Being a start-up firm meant there were no daunting hierarchies and very little bureaucracy, so I was thrown in at the deep end as employee number eleven (and six of them were developers!).

Whilst writing this I am only 2/3rds of the way through my four-month role; so far I’ve secured a partnership with British Judo as well as played my part in GroupSpaces acquiring over 1,200 new student groups, bringing the company’s presence in the UK university market from 2,500 to almost 4,000 groups. By the time my internship ends I would be shocked if GroupSpaces hadn’t broken through this number – a figure which would roughly see the firm being used by half of all UK student groups.

My responsibilities have varied significantly. One day can see me planning and executing an email and campus marketing campaign with the UK Marketing Manager, the next I could be sitting down with the CEO and CTO to discuss strategy, and the next I could be visiting a university Fresher’s Fair or personally speaking at a training conference for a national student network. Needless to say, such an intense and diverse schedule has meant that I have developed a truly valuable skillset – project management, strategic thinking, sales, public speaking, customer relationship management and most valuably of all, having to show the leadership to not only run an entire marketing campaign on my own, but to make a real difference in my brief time with one of Europe’s hottest tech companies.

Working with just a handful of fantastic colleagues to build a company from the ground up, and getting stuck into grassroots marketing by speaking to thousands of student group leaders at eighteen fresher fairs up and down the country has given me more tangible results than I could have ever expected. The perks of having a brand spanking new iPad to keep me company and the unwritten Silicon Roundabout rule of never getting into the office before 10am have also been great .

I’m absolutely certain GroupSpaces will push on to become one of Britain’s greatest internet exports to the world stage in the next few years, and I’ll be proud to have played my part in their early growth.

Chris Godwin
GroupSpaces.com | Marketing Internship

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