Agency Life: The Elevator Pitch to Employers

We need to find 50 homes for our 50 teams (of 6) who make up the student body from our marketing, PR, advertising, digital and retail programmes.

Agency Life is a response to the need to provide industry with graduates who have experience (most job ads ask this). It’s a fairly low effort from the client company but provides maximum returns to those that engage. It’s the first time we’ve run this – in response to industry requests – so now it’s time for that industry to come on board with this social contract and respond.

The Elevator Pitch is:

• Each firm (whether agency or client-side, whether a 1 person business or a FTSE100) will have a team of 6 2nd year students who will work the equivalent of a day a week for an academic year. We equate this to 6 person days a week from end of September to end of April, the persons being (on average) 20 year old, inexperienced but bright, enthusiastic talent.
• It costs the firm nothing in wages – this scheme is within the HMRC approved guidelines as it is part of a taught programme. So think of it as 1 day a week internships for a team of 6.
• Each team (or the persons within that team) need to spend a minimum of one morning or afternoon at the chosen location of their firm – be that onsite or with a client. Locations need to be within Greater Manchester. The other morning or afternoon is usually spent with us back at All Saints working on client work/tasks but equally it can also be spent at the client location.
• A team can work as a team and all come in on one day, or they can be split into individuals and come in on different days of the week.
• A team can work on one project, several projects at the same time or a series of projects. Work does not even have to be project based and can be the tasks and roles one would normally expect of an entry-level person. In summary:
  • A whole team could work on a project all year
  • A whole team could work on several projects one after the other
  • A whole team could work on several projects at any one time
  • Individuals could be assigned to different tasks with different client staff each work
  • A team could come in on the same day each week
  • The team could be split for different tasks
  • Individuals could come in on different days for completely unrelated tasks

Pretty much any arrangement is fine.

Host firms have a few duties of care and responsibilities:

• Each team needs to be supervised, so someone needs to act as their manager. This will involve setting the tasks, acting as an employer, managing the team. There are some small elements to play in the assessment of these students – but it’s small, uncomplicated and for many employers it’s a satisfying way of being part of the student engagement. The key thing is that the employers provide a real experience of working life over the year, experience that they would be happy to accept as real experience when interviewing for staff in the future.
• The team could be supervised as a whole by one person, or individuals could be supervised by individual host employer staff members.
• Suggestions for tasks/projects include:
  • A research project that has been hanging around for ages but nobody has had space to look at
  • Pro-bono work that a firm has picked up but there’s no space for anyone to do it
  • Tasks that need doing that are important but not urgent
  • Sudden influxes of work that need lots of help
  • Detail work that can be completed with some initial training
  • Making the tea once in a while (a good task when you need to learn what everyone is called and what they do)
  • Managing events

There’s no end to what’s possible and there’s nothing we’ll rule out.

The whole programme has a dedicated client manager, plus Ben Keegan and David Edmundson-Bird as the Academic directors – plus lots of ex-agency coaches coming into the Uni to support the students.

Please sign up today. We know it will make an enormous difference to you, your firm and your future talent. Come to “Parents Evening” and find out more. Download our Guide to help you make your choices.