Birmingham's student talent recognised by B-Hive
Birmingham's student talent recognised by B-HiveThe cream of Birmingham's student talent have been awarded 92 weeks' worth of paid work experience in the city's marketing and creative companies after impressing judges of the B-Hive competition.
Birmingham-based students were challenged to answer a brief on how to make Birmingham a greener city and had to submit their responses in one of four categories: PR, graphic design, digital and marketing.
The top entrants in each category were then invited to present their ideas to a panel of industry judges.
Over 80 students and industry professionals were at the announcement of the 2010 winners following two days of competitive presentations. Each category also has an overall winner who will benefit from additional paid placements.
Sarah Mortimer was named overall winner for PR and will spend four weeks at Willougby PR and Rewired PR. Mandy Wong won for design and will be on placement at KLM, McCann Erickson, Seal, RBH, WAA and Unsuitable. Ellie Rance was marketing winner and will have four weeks' work experience at Marketing Birmingham and COI. And Alex Badau won in digital to earn placements at Made Media, Clusta, Cogent, Freestyle Interactive, One Black Bear and TAMBA.
Emma Gray, head of Marketing Birmingham, which is one of the scheme's backers, said: "There is a huge amount of creative talent emerging from Birmingham universities and the B-Hive scheme plays a pivotal part in helping the region retain that talent.
"Birmingham’s thriving creative sector regularly works with high profile brand names so their involvement in B-Hive highlights the importance of this scheme to the industry. We were very impressed with the calibre of the entries this year and are looking forward to welcoming the overall marketing winner, Ellie Rance to Marketing Birmingham for her four week placement, where she will become involved in the Taste of Birmingham food festival.”
B-Hive was set up by recruitment firm Pitch Consultants to help Birmingham's upcoming creative and marketing talent get a foot in the door of the city's agencies.
Ollie Purdom, director at Pitch, said: "Students graduating during this economic climate have a difficult job getting their foot on the career ladder which is why we wanted to give them a helping hand.
"We understand how important work experience is in such a highly competitive job market but believe the experience they will gain through B-Hive will stand them in good step for future employment. In fact, several of the winners from last years scheme actually gained employment as a direct result of participating in B-Hive.”
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Any chance of seeing examples of their work?
The cynic in me suspects the scheme could be another 'creative' device for aquiring cheap labour. I'm sick of Internships or whatever they call them. It's good old fashioned expoitation in lean times, of people who have ended up with £20K student loan debts after three to four years of hard work and desperate to gain some work experience.
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Don't be a misery. Its 92 weeks of PAID work. I'd have killed for that chance fresh out of Uni
Is it 92 weeks of properly paid work for one person Paul? Or is it like a Gordon Brown budget? Not what it seems. If people have talent give them a permanent job and pay them a proper salary.
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It’s a shame you’re cynical about the industry giving new talent the chance to shine.
As you’ll see from the long list of participating agencies/employers, this isn’t one agency trying to be creative in how they find cheap people. It’s about the region collectively coming together to identify, encourage and nurture the best up & coming talent. And to give them a genuine opportunity to get into the industry they aspire to work in.
Read any advice, anywhere, from industry experts about how to get your foot in the door and they’ll all say the same thing; take initiative, be proactive, try to get as much experience as you can, any way you can. B-Hive is giving them a platform to do just that and the feedback from all of the students – whether they won or not – has been inspiring.
Also worth pointing out that the universities and colleges are fully behind the initiative and are now looking at building the B-Hive briefs into their curricula.
So far, B-Hive has given 27 students valuable real-world experience and the fact that some of last year’s entrants have secured full-time salaried employment should in itself justify the value of the scheme.
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I am from one of the supporting agencies of B-Hive and can fully back up Ollie's points.
The standard of entry was extremely high and considering the number of work experience enquiries we receive at WPR, this scheme is a sure fire way for prospective PR's to stand out from the crowd.
It is hard for companies to offer work experience placements / internships on a regular basis because of the time needed to make sure both parties benefit. Whilst I was a student five years ago, trying to get the attention of employers and gain vital experience, I appreciate how competitive the industry is and would have relished the opportunity to take part in something such as this.
We aim to provide enthusiastic, creative students an insight into our industry whenever we can - as an employer, you can't expect grads to have experience if you do not offer placements yourself, it's a catch 22 - and often these are part of course requirements so I would beg to differ that this is not 'cheap labour' and more 'valuable experience'.
What B-Hive this year demonstrated to me is how much young talent there is out there and how with employer encouragement and schemes such as this, we can all benefit in the long run.
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Thankfully there is new blood coming through - like the talented B-Hive winners - that will hopefully put idiots like 'anonymous' out to pasture.
Anonymous, if your comment was designed to provoke a response, then well done. If it was intended to showcase your grasp of spelling, however, shame on you.
Glad to be involved, Ollie. Keep up the good work and don't let unintelligible commentary like this bother you.
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I think if you ask any graduate they wouldn’t mind a little 'cheap labor' as you call it.
As one of last years winners I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to work in a number of agencies and get bags of valuable experience under my belt and more importantly a foot in the door just weeks after finishing university.
Recent grads would rather have a foot in the door then a wallet full of cash if they truly care about their career, after all it’s only when you’re in an agency do you get the chance to turn that into a full time position.
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