PRESS RELEASE: PLACEMENT PROGRAMME REACHES OUT TO STUDENTS AND BUSINESSES ACROSS LONDON

6th April 2011: Step launches 2011 programme search for London’s Most Enterprising Students and Graduates

With graduate unemployment levels at historic highs, the UK’s leading paid student placement and internship provider today announces it is expanding its programme across London to enable more students and graduates to gain the experience which could be vital to landing a permanent job.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said:

“It is essential that graduates move successfully from academic to working life and a place on an internship scheme is a fantastic way to start out. I am delighted to support a programme that not only works to provide real opportunities for graduates, but that also directly helps to enhance the competitiveness and productivity of the capital’s businesses.”

For 2011 Step is working with two new key partners to help expand the number and range of opportunities available across London. The Careers Group (University of London) are giving Step a major boost this year by offering the placement programme to their employer partners for the first time, and will be working closely with Step’s other new partner Real World Magazine. Existing partner WEXO (Work Experience Online) will continue to focus on the creative industries and SMEs and the partnership will be managed by the central Step team.

Every summer STEP places hundreds of undergraduates to run business development projects tailored to their individual skills and career ambitions. And following a highly successful trial supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in 2010, Step will now continue to also offer opportunities to recent graduates.

The 12-week placements give students and graduates the chance to generate results which could provide a real boost to their employment prospects whilst gaining relevant and meaningful work experience. The programme, has delivered more than 23,000 projects in SMEs since it began in 1986.

Small businesses, which still may find themselves stretched in the current economic climate, also benefit from the projects, which can deliver substantial financial rewards. Every year, almost half (48%) of Step students add more than £5,000 worth of value to their host business, while a fifth (17%) have added more than £30,000.

Students and graduates can apply for a wide range of placements ranging from designing websites and bespoke software to devising marketing strategies and identifying potential new markets.

The programmes have helped deliver paid placements to companies ranging from Manchester United’s London offices to innovative new London Gin distiller, Sipsmith and internet sensations Mydeco.com and Skimbit to property company Ivy Lettings.

Philip Donnelly, Programme Director at Step Enterprise, said: “Step is a direct and practical response to the challenge that tens of thousands of UK graduates face when they move from the world of study into employment. I am delighted that with our new London partners we will be creating more opportunities for meaningful placements right across the Capital.”

Students and recent graduates can find out more and apply for a placement in London at www.wexo.co.uk Towards the end of their placement all candidates will write a blog on their achievements and personal development, which will be entered into the ‘Most Enterprising Student’ awards.

Businesses that have a potential project opportunity should email info@wexo.co.uk or visit the website for more information. Applications received by April 30th will benefit from a special Spring discount offer.

~ENDS~

For more information contact Robin Kennedy on info@wexo.co.uk

Notes to editors:

Step is a direct response to the challenge that tens of thousands of UK graduates face when they move from the world of study into employment.

Step has received a range of national and regional Government funding in past years, and until 2009 was sponsored by Shell UK. Following Shell’s withdrawal of support in 2009-10, Step Enterprise have worked hard to develop and enhance the programme, creating a sustainable focused entirely on the needs of participating students, graduates and employers.

Are you comfortable that you’re getting value for money? An inside account on the intricacies of unpaid internships…

For a long time now, there has been a debate raging about unpaid internships and I wanted to take some time to clarify our position. This follows both our original blog on this subject (in the words of the original protagonist) ‘It’s my work, he’d say, and I do it for pay…’over a year ago on 1st December 2009 (in response to a BBC debate on Intern Abuse) and the proceeding comments in August last year (following our failure to bring together an Internship Alliance to try and lobby the new government to incentivise companies to operate paid internship schemes).

The song effectively remains the same:

“Today, more and more actual graduates are resorting to internships and in the brave new world, it is only right that if you are adding value to a company you should be paid at least the National Minimum Wage (NMW – approx £210 a week). Social mobility is key and unpaid internships discriminate against people who simply can’t afford to work for free. But in these dire economic times, with companies struggling to make ends meet, we must be careful not to scare companies away from opening their doors to young people all together. They need to be incentivised to understand their obligation to help the youth of today; not named and shamed because they can’t.”

Many will argue that not paying interns NMW is illegal. I suspect this is probably true but so is smoking cannabis and approximately 1 in 4 16-25 year olds have broken the law and tried it. What I am more interested in is the morality of not paying interns.

An article on Business Link’s website makes it very clear as to who is and who isn’t entitled to NMW. As it infers, my mother who volunteers for the local hospice (a charity although by law voluntary workers can work for any of charities, voluntary organisations, associated fund raising bodies or statutory bodies) is not entitled to minimum wage (and nor would she want it) because she is a volunteer – and so does not have any contract (written or verbal) to perform work or provide services. Anyone who falls outside of this is entitled to minimum wage. This probably includes most interns.

What about undergraduates? Along these lines, for anyone who is shadowing a company or learning from them as in work experience, then there is not the obligation to pay them because they are not providing a service or working under contract. On occasion, undergraduates are exempt from NMW (usually if their tutors agree that the internship is related to their course and they are not performing a service to the host company). During my time at university I did 3 internships over 3 summers and each of these paid me in excess of minimum wage (one even gave me a bonus at the end). I’d like to think this was because in each case I provided a service that added value in excess of the value I derived from the internship experience.

Legally, isn’t this a grey area? Yes, but what matters for me, as I have suggested above, is that if someone adds (monetary) net value to the entity they work for (or be it future value) then morally they should be rewarded for it irrespective – and this we see as the acid test. Along these lines we are very happy to see companies offer ‘work experience’ for up to 2 weeks – and we would encourage them to pay expenses during this time. Any longer than this though and the chances are that an individual will be adding value and so should be paid accordingly.

What about the BBC and Parliament? I am not exempting these institutions that are renowned for not paying their interns but arguably the interns are deriving more value from the experience and so do not pass the acid test. If though (as is often the case with smaller companies) there is a ‘job description’ or a list of responsibilities then the logical conclusion is that the intern is going to be adding value and should be paid accordingly!

I am no socialist – I view myself as a liberal conservative, a proponent on free market economics and people ‘getting on their bike’ (albeit with the safety net of a welfare state) – but I am tiring of companies (particularly in some distinct parts of the creative industries) telling me that they used to work for free and so their interns can too. I do not see why anyone should pay their interns (especially in this day and age with student debts as they are) anything less than I pay my cleaner.

What about start-ups? WEXO is a start-up and we pay our interns. I don’t feel comfortable asking people to help me build a company for free. I am encouraged to see a number of start-ups round London doing the same thing. I’m all in favour of getting young people in to experience start-up life and entrepreneurship but not if they’re a substitute for employees. If you can’t afford to pay your interns or grads, you should probably wait until you can, question your business model, or look at some other form of commensurate remuneration via say equity or (bizarrely in an equivalent move to what Barclays Capital is suggesting for bonuses) even bonds (in simple terms, IOUs). This might not stand up legally but it probably does ethically. If as a ‘Founder’ you choose not to pay yourself (as I myself have done on occasion) then to my mind, that is your prerogative but I suspect that in your own interest, you would be advised to make an IOU arrangement via directors loans instead of just foregoing payment. Not paying yourself does not justify not paying your workforce.

Should there be a limit to how long internships can last? Timing is one issue that we haven’t visited in past writings. In economic times like these though, internships have become a temporary employment vehicle for graduates and in line with other players in this field (including STEP whose BIS and LDA programmes we helped deliver last year. Programmes that include schemes to help incentivise companies to pay interns) we strongly suggest that internships should last no longer than 3 months. After this time, companies should either ‘step’ up to the plate and commit to a giving them a job or let them get on with finding one elsewhere. Otherwise young people will get stuck in an ‘internship trap’.

What about the new £2.50 an hour proposals from the CIPD? The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development have suggested interns should be paid £2.50 an hour which works out as roughly £400 a month (see BBC article earlier this month) As far as we are concerned, all this does is reduce the inequality. In all honesty, could you live on this?

So what? I voted Conservative, was impressed by Michael Gove when he spoke at an event I attended; and on the face of it, I can’t stand Ed Balls. I believe in cutting the deficit, to an extent; (we still have less debt as a country than Japan and Italy have had for much of the last decade as per interesting Fresh Minds article) I will hold my hand up and say that I back the hike in graduate fees. What I can’t condone is slashing investment in jobs (be in the Future Jobs Fund or private sector stimuli) and basic education (literacy in particular in this country is poor). We called, some time ago, for companies to be able to recoup the cost of hiring interns at National Minimum Wage from the recent VAT hike. This could help solve the conundrum addressed herein. Last week youth unemployment reached new record highs. And young people don’t fully understand the roles that ARE on offer hence our event on 8th February. We issued a press release for this last week but as I said in another release in June:

“Existing public sector initiatives have made no dent in this crisis; it is our opinion that if the situation is to improve, the government needs to start properly backing the private sector [not just relying on it]. The VAT hike will help UK Plc raise a much needed £13Bn but figures suggest the average return on hiring a graduate is 500% over 3 years so that’s one of the main places I’d be investing it.”

Robin Kennedy

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.

“Read. See. Expand“: that’s how you’ll get somewhere in fashion. And no, these aren’t my own words (I’m no fashion career expert, and certainly not the kind of girl to quote herself. Yet). They come from Emily Zak, Vogue’s Retail Editor, during her address at the WEXO-sponsored LSE Fashion Society career event last night.

So in case you’re confused, this week’s blog is a bit of a departure from the norm. Last night our offices at WEXO Towers were inundated with well-dressed hordes of LSE fashionistas eager to learn from five guest speakers. Our stylish and incredibly experienced panel included: Chloe Lonsdale, founder of MiH Jeans; Kinvara Balfour, fashion writer and London Editor of Daily Candy.com; Austique’s co-founder Katie Canvin; and Ruby Dhillon, manager of Gucci fragrances at Procter & Gamble.

Needless to say, we found ourselves in the company of some pretty driven and well-connected women.

When I wasn’t furiously flooding the WEXO twitter account with event tweets, I drew on five different routes to success that our guests highlighted:

1. Experience is everything. Put in the work at internships and placements, and you will be rewarded.
2. An artistic and culturally-aware approach will get you far. If references to ‘A Love Story’, the history of French couture houses and the difference between raglan and dolman sleeves are lost on you, you need to read more. All the fine details are magnified when it comes to a feel for and knowledge of fashion.
3. Starting a fashion company needs a business-savvy approach. Now that sounds almost redundant and obvious, but meticulous planning can hardly be stressed enough.
4. An opportunity to get your foot in the door may spring up at any point. Always be prepared, and don’t forget about the importance of nearby, untapped contacts.
5. A strong work ethic and passion to succeed in any enterprise will be invaluable in fashion. If you’re resilient, this is the industry for you.

Wow. Fashion and the military seem to have more in common than autumn’s trends of olive-green parkas and utilitarian detailing, huh? Persistence is key to making it in fashion, so we thought we’d help point you in the right direction towards building up your style knowledge. Our panel suggest checking out blogs from the Coolhunter, Jak & Jil, Garance Doré, Nowness, Fifi Lapin and of course Vogue.com. In their view, blogs are a new and exciting platform for fashion, but still can’t quite match the reach and presence of good old-fashioned print magazines.

Got more questions of your own for our panel? We’ll be collating them here in the comments section, or on the wall our Facebook fan page. Here’s your chance to unleash any burning questions of the fashion sort. We’ll also be posting video footage from the night soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

Overall if I learned anything last night it’s that hard work and a refusal to fail will be the perfect ingredients for anyone looking to break into the industry. On that note, forward march!

Tshepo Mokoena

Photos courtesy of Chu Ting Ng at TheQualified blog.

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.

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

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

When I first heard of WEXO in the winter of 2008 I was an unemployed ex-student whose decision to study Egyptian Archaeology at University had sorely damaged his hope of finding a job in a recession. It was not a happy time. This was a point when I had signed up to the huge array of job websites on the internet all promising the impossible and almost always resulting in jobs in sales and recruitment, not my idea of a future!

As I filled in my WEXO profile I was quietly pessimistic that it would be like all the others but how wrong I was to be…

Within a week I had three interviews for internships and three very different companies that all appealed to me. After being accepted by two I chose to work for SUPERchick, a women’s personal training and fitness company, which not only provided me with a great holistic approach to a start up company but also filled my CV with some great skills for future employers to mull over. I was once told by a highly influential CEO in London that unpaid work experience was one of the key qualities he looked for in candidates and so I valued it highly. SUPERchick is run by Sky Sports presenter Georgie Thompson and I met some very interesting people on the job. My time was largely spent helping out with day to day office duties.

After this very successful internship I actually went on to work for WEXO itself in Business Development. I spent 7 months involved in all aspects of the business which involved everything from developing a Client Relationship Management tool to helping market WEXO at The Guardian Graduate Career Fair. My time at WEXO has now inspired me to go it alone and build my own start-up. My company, Alexandria Bespoke Libraries (www.alexandria-bespoke.com), builds collections of literature as well as dealing in rare and antiquarian books. This is something I had always wanted to do and working with and through WEXO I not only gained some indispensible skills and contacts but also the inspiration to go it alone!

I am truly grateful to WEXO for everything they have done for me and would recommend them to anyone that was in a similar position to me after university!


Elliott Rampley
thelibrary@alexandria-bespoke.com
www.alexandria-bespoke.com

All well in WEXO Towers…

We’ve just signed up our 70th company (looking to launch to users when we get to 3 figures) but one of the comments we come up against occasionally is “Why would we want to open up our offices to more work experience students?”. The companies we talk to are generally of two types. Company X is small, dynamic and growing and welcomes talented graduates (on the cheap) with open arms. Company Y tends to be larger, more conservative and already gets quantities of applications for work experience, feels compelled to accept some (especially from clients’ children etc) but does not necessarily subscribe to the benefits.

Company X is most commonly found in the Media sector (especially PR and Advertising). Company Y typically comes from vocationally geared sectors. Company Y is more often sold on what WEXO can provide in terms of marketing, matching and managing applications through the scarily named Web 2.0 tools and STP (Straight Through Processing) techniques that we provide.

An article by Rosie Gamble in the Sunday Times last weekend picked up on this theme. Despite a tacky title, it made a compelling case for student placements not necessarily being a burden. The argument here was that in smaller companies in particular, giving students responsibility gave them the impetus to rise to the challenge - and being new to the working world they often did so with a fresh perspective. With internships in particular (placements of 2 months plus), companies could really benefit, effectively conducting long term interviews that enabled them to then hire the best students in good faith when they left their studies.

The biggest problems then came down to how you sourced and picked your candidates. The answer here of course is WEXO…