Yesterday, I was asked to speak at the ‘Winning Internships’ event hosted by the London Careers Group (the careers advisory service for almost every university in London). There were an impressive selection of over 300 employers there ranging from BSkyB to Morgan Stanley and the intriguingly named MyChocolate to the flamboyant philanthropic millionaire, Felix Dennis’s self named publishing company. The latter even sent both a director and a highly entertaining intern to talk about their positive experiences of working with paid internship schemes using the STEP programmes that we are proud to have been running for over 2 years.

The other speakers at the event included STEP’s CEO, Phil Donnelly and Jon Heuvel, (Chair of The Skills and Employment Forum, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry) who took us through the legal angle on internships which largely dovetailed with our own perspective. I was actually filling in for the Universities Minister David Willets and noted the disappointment that most of the audience must have felt, expecting a politician who studies universities and getting someone who simply studied politics at university. I’m grateful for the positive feedback I received though for talking about the theory of internships, the issues surrounding them and using our work with UPS and the Olympics as a case study for how internships can work in practice. For those of you asking or interested, the slides are here.

As I am always stressing, the critical issue for me is distinguishing internships from work experience and understanding who derives the value which dictates remuneration. In ‘Intern Nation’ author Ross Perlin’s words, through unpaid internships,“all of us – employers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves – are complicit [albeit subconsciously] in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace”. In the absence of the government prioritizing graduate employment as a policy or investment focus, it is up to all of us to work together to address this. We should not be regulating, naming and shaming those that don’t pay their interns, we should we educating, incentivising and encouraging them to change their approach.

Having done the first WEXO Summer Fete at UCL and our first ever event at the Guardian London Graduate Fair (run by The Careers Group) it was fitting to be involved. What struck me most was the enthusiasm from employers for doing the right things by graduates whether it be for moral or legal reasons. My thanks to The London Careers Group for involving us.

Robin Kennedy

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

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

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

It’s hard enough leaving university and finding a job, let alone not having a clue what you want to do in life. At least I’ve got a year to decide but with a long 3 month summer ahead of me I was beginning to panic about what I was going to do to fill my time. Having done various money earning jobs in the past I wanted to invest a little time into my future and do some work experience. Having exhausted my own contacts, I discovered WEXO thanks to my sister and it opened up a whole host of options, not to mention the time it saved trawling through the internet sending hundreds of applications to millions of companies. I can honestly say WEXO bent over backwards to help me – after a couple things fell through, WEXO made sure they were on the case and looking for other alternatives. Through one of their targeted alerts, WEXO informed me of a placement for work experience available in a small bespoke travel company run by Laura Jeffrey and I was put me in touch with her.

I have now done 2 weeks work experience at Passepartout Travel and have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. It was exactly what I was looking for, a small company where I could be really involved with the day to day running of the business, and involved in decision making. I knew from the beginning I didn’t want to be one of a million in a huge company and this experience has suited me perfectly. I have taken on real responsibility in the form of creating Passepartout’s monthly newsletter, working alongside Laura and learning how to create the right ‘look and feel’, be concise and help set apart Passepartout from other companies. It has been a fascinating experience and made me realise how much hard work goes into some of the smallest tasks. Another benefit of working for a small company was the opportunity to get out and about, going to meetings with contacts in other industries and not necessarily working 9 to 5; I worked until what I was doing was done. But probably the most valuable thing I have learnt has been how much hard work it takes setting up your own company and but how great the rewards can be, and I can safely say this would not have been possible without the brilliant help of WEXO who made it all possible.

Huge thanks WEXO!

Tessa Robinson

When I arrived in London, after graduating from Newcastle, I was a little unsure of what career path to take. But after successfully completing a business training course I stumbled across WEXO. WEXO are not like any other recruitment agency. They took a genuine interest in me as an individual and offered some great advice and support. Most importantly they helped me find an internship at MiH Jeans. I interned for three months before being offered a permanent position back in April.

I work on the UK Sales team which is something I would have never imagined doing when I graduated. MiH Jeans has been an adventure from the moment I started and has grown massively as a brand. Because it is still a relatively new company which is evolving everyday there is always something exciting going on.

My daily responsibilities are constantly changing but here is an example of some of my daily tasks:

• Responsible for Koodos- sending out ordered jeans through Parcelforce and replenishing stock levels
• Ordering up Jeans from the warehouse for the Sales and PR teams
• Helping organise and potentially being in charge of future sample sales
• Taking part in Sales visits- being aware of their current and previous orders and taking any relevant press information
• Filling out marketing research questionnaires for stockists to help with future marketing and sales ideas.
• Checking in returns and organising for these to be sent down to the warehouse with correct packing lists which will then be filed here.
• Accounts

Throughout my time I have slowly been given more responsibility and I now work directly with the buyers. this is great experience as it has given me the chance to make a name for myself in the industry whilst building relationships with the buyers.

The team at MiH Jeans are all hugely passionate about the brand and this didn’t take long to rub off on me which makes it a much more enjoyable place to work as everyone is eager to see the brand succeed.

MiH Jeans has been a fantastic opportunity for me as it has opened my eyes to a role I would have never considered before and this is all thanks to the help and support of WEXO. I can’t thank you enough.

Nicola Tulloch

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

I’ve just finished my internship at Sipsmith Independent Spirits. Here I was working as the Activation Sales Manager.

Working at Sipsmith has been a joyous experience combining off-trade sales with a strategy and enthusiam inspired by the founders. One might say an infectious courtesy and respect that ensures all of those envolved within the Sipsmith family, from the founders to the sales assistants right the way down to the discerning drinker are all seemingly drawn in by the excitement of what has been acheived and what is acheivable.

In no way has my role been static or monotonous, it has been a whirlwind of new challenges and I am always willing to take these on due to the belief that I am part of something. Working within a small team has been extremely beneficial, never a dull moment and a far cry from my previous work in the financial sector. Here I can appreciate a “product”. Something that brings people together within an industry which is hard work yet rewarding, very much along the lines of the mantra “work hard, play hard”.

Unfamiliar with WEXO before I now realise how it has enabled companies such as Sipsmith to get the best out of their interns.

Clark Betz

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

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