Archive for the ‘Inspiring Office Antics’ category

Inspiring clothing designs

February 6th, 2012

We are creating an Inspiring clothing range! Some of the clothing will be given to our brand ambassadors to wear around their university campus. We have designed three possible prints for the t-shirts and hoodies and we need your valued opinion to help us pick the best one. Have a look at the three designs below and vote for your favourite.

By voting you will be automatically entered into our prize draw to win the final design. Comment below to vote by leaving your full name and favourite design or vote on our Facebook page.  The winner will be announced next week.

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Posted in Inspiring Office Antics, Just for fun

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Celebrating our 3rd birthday with over 1,300 internships!

January 30th, 2012

London’s leading graduate internship recruitment agency is celebrating their 3rd birthday this month. In three years Inspiring Interns have successfully created over 1,300 internships for unemployed graduates. Over 65% of these internships have lead to new, permanent jobs and the majority of the remainder have gone on to secure permanent work elsewhere as a result of their additional experience.

Inspiring Interns had a very exciting year last year.  Our expanding business took on six new members of staff, five of who started as interns themselves. As we grew we needed somewhere bigger and better to house our budding team.  We bid a sad goodbye to our old office which has been our home from day one and moved down the road to our new headquarters. Our new office houses two candidate interview rooms so we can help twice as many graduates into jobs every day.

Last year saw us celebrate the publication of our careers guidebook Brilliant Intern which provides practical and meaningful advice to help graduates find and make the most of their internships.

We announced a wonderful new partnership with Job Centre Plus and the Work Experience Programme towards the end of the year to help support graduates who want to undertake an internship. Thanks to the partnership, interns are able to receive JSA (normally £53.45 a week) for a minimum of eight weeks during their internship. When graduates would otherwise be job hunting this scheme allows them to gain invaluable work experience at no additional cost. With this added work experience the likelihood of them getting a paid graduate role is highly increased, along with their employability due to their newfound awareness of a commercial setting.

An internship bridges the gap between student life and the working world – it is a vocational learning experience which provides graduates with practical experience, valuable skills and a network of contacts to increase a graduate’s understanding of an industry. Inspiring Interns founder and CEO Ben Rosen explains;

“Internships are a great tool to allow companies to minimise their risk when hiring inexperienced staff, while giving graduates the opportunity to create and earn positions that may not have been there without the internship. A three month placement gives the intern the chance to learn lots of new hands-on skills and make themselves indispensible, and therefore move into permanent employment.”

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Our 10 most popular blog posts of 2011

December 29th, 2011

As the end of the year fast approaches, we would like to give you a quick run down of our best blog posts of 2011.

Take a look below for our most viewed blogs of this year combining a variety of topics including; graduate and student news, current affairs, careers advice, case studies and all topped off with some Inspiring office antics.

1. The weirdest job interview questions

Do you have an interview coming up and have no clue what they are going to ask you? Find out the oddest interview questions that have been used by some of the biggest multi-national companies. Read more

2. Why National Minimum Wage does not mean a fair deal for interns

Nick Clegg launched his social mobility strategy this year and announced that the Government would be doing more to ensure internships are open for all.  We give our opinions on the importance of raising the standards of internships for all but why enforcing NMW for every single internship is neither appropriate nor necessarily beneficial for interns themselves. Read more

3. 9 ways to beat those ‘graduate blues’

Are you at the stage between leaving university and finding out what you want to do next and feeling slightly lost? Here are 9 tips on how to deal with this normal reaction to graduating from university. Read more

4. What is a Digital Marketing Executive?

Companies are increasingly realising the importance of digital marketing in enhancing their business thus creating many new career paths and job titles. We catch up with a digital marketing intern Joe Kiddle to find out what the role entails. Read more

5. A graduate guide to LinkedIn

LinkedIn serves as an online CV and allows you to connect with friends, colleagues and companies in professional capacity.  The value of LinkedIn is immeasurable however it is not being used effectively enough by graduates during the job hunt. This blog post offers advice on how to set up your own LinkedIn account and how to actively update it. Read more

6. Graduate unemployment figures highest in over a decade

It was reported back in January that one in five of those who have left university in the past year are unable to find work within six months. The report from the Office for National Statistics suggests graduates have been hit hardest by the economic downturn. Read more

7. The big office move!

This year we said a sad farewell to our old office and moved down the road to our new headquarters. We documented the move in pictures from the emptying of the old office to the building of the new. Have a nose through the final office pictures here.

8. The alternative to graduate schemes 2011

Graduate schemes are highly desirable for many university leavers and there are plenty of benefits if you are accepted onto one. However, with record numbers of students graduating this year, competition for these schemes is high. We have put together some alternative ways to land a graduate job that can be an equally, if not more, rewarding step onto the career ladder. Read more

9. Graduates are working in low skilled jobs

It was reported earlier this year that university leavers are increasingly taking menial jobs that do not require a degree.  New statistics published by the Association of Accounting Technicians reveals that 40% of last year’s graduates are ‘underemployed’ in lower-skilled jobs six months after leaving university. Read More

10. Cheap and cheerful Christmas presents – guest blog

One of our guest bloggers, Sara Royle offers her tips on how to buy Christmas presents on a minimal budget ensuring your nearest and dearest get lovely gifts, and that you can still afford to pay that dreaded winter heating bill. Useful if you need a late present! Read More

Happy New Year from the Inspiring Team!

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Posted in CV & Interview Tips, Debate, Inspiring Office Antics, Just for fun, News, careers advice

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The big office move!

December 5th, 2011

Last week we said goodbye to our old office and moved down the road to our new headquarters.

It was a sad farewell to our old pad which has been our home for nearly 3 years but for an ever expanding business we are moving on to bigger and better things.

The new office offers more space for our growing team to help even more graduates into jobs. We now have two candidate interview rooms so we can help twice as many young people every day.

In the move we managed to keep the essence of our old office and not lose any of the Inspiring charm -we have just spruced it up a bit!

Have a nose at the photos from our moving day:


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Inspiring Interns celebrate placing their 1000th intern

August 3rd, 2011

With hundreds of thousands of new graduates flooding an already crowded employment market, the media is traditionally heavy with dire warnings about young jobseekers’ lack of prospects at this time of year. Fortunately, one start-up company in London is helping buck this trend. Inspiring Interns are celebrating creating 1000 graduate internships since being founded in January 2009, with over 600 of these leading to new, permanent jobs.

It is an impressive success story against a backdrop of rising youth unemployment and a suspicion among employers that hiring inexperienced workers in the current climate is too big a risk. With graduates trapped in the ‘need experience to get a job, need a job to get experience’ vicious circle, Inspiring Interns CEO and founder Ben Rosen believes that internships are the perfect model to get graduates into meaningful work.

“The employment market is currently saturated, not just with those immediately out of university but by people with over a year’s experience under their belt. Graduates are finding that they simply cannot compete in these conditions and as such remain unemployed or find menial work that does not make best use of their education.

“An internship gives them the chance to learn practical skills which will impress potential employers, as well as make useful industry contacts and even earn themselves a full-time job.”

Interestingly, Inspiring Interns have found most success in newer industries which often complement many graduates’ personal interests. Areas such as mobile technology and digital marketing offer potential for swift progression when compared to more traditional professions and also allow university leavers to draw on familiar skills, such as knowledge of social media.

Having reached the 1000 intern mark independently, Inspiring Interns are now calling on the Government to do more to support internships and help create jobs for graduates. Commenting on the recent launch of BIS’s Common Best Practice Code for High Quality Internships, Ben Rosen said,

“It is encouraging to see the Coalition engaging with internships and attempting to offer some guidance to business. However we would like to see them create some genuine measures, such as allowing companies to redirect National Insurance payments to internship programmes, in order to support what is now a proven model for combating graduate unemployment.”

Having reached the 1000 mark, Rosen is unequivocal in his vision for Inspiring Interns. “2000 is next! There are still tens of thousands of graduates looking for work and thousands of companies who are unaware of the benefit hungry young talent can bring to their organisation. Inspiring Interns is committed to bringing the two together, creating jobs and boosting business.”

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The 40-Year-Old Intern

October 8th, 2010

The knock-on effect of recession means graduates aren’t just competing for entry-level jobs against experienced workers: they’re now competing against them for internships too.



If you’ve been living in a distant galactic bubble for the last couple of years then you still might not have heard the news – we are currently suffering from a severe global economic downturn.

Yet it seems that as well as all the obvious effects occurring; national cuts, increased unemployment rate, higher numbers of university applicants etc, there have also been a few less expected outcomes, like the increase of older people seeking internships.

A survey conducted last month by CareerBuilder.com discovered that the struggling job market has sparked a surge of older people in the US applying for internships as a way to re-enter the employment sector.

The website, which surveyed more than 2,500 hiring managers across America, found that 23 percent of employers are receiving applications from people who either have more than 10 years of experience, or are aged 50 years and older.

“This economic downturn has really redefined what an internship is” said Mike Erwin, senior career advisor for CareerBuilder. “(People) need to make sure that they’re filling in the gaps while being unemployed, so they’re going ahead and taking these internships whether they’re paid or unpaid so they can get more experience, and hopefully land a full-time job.”

Traditionally, internships have been seen as a way for young people to get work experience on their CV. However, as the recession continues to kick in, and more and more graduates struggle to get the jobs that so many other more qualified individuals are also applying for, internships have taken on a much more important role. They are becoming that vital stepping stone between university and permanent employment.

However, the new statistics could mean that such graduates have an even greater fight on their hands as they find themselves competing against experienced people not only for pre-entry jobs – but also for internships.

Furthermore, the websites findings showed that many companies were just as keen to hire the older applicants as the more common younger ones;

“They know they’ve lost a lot of intellectual capital when they’ve had to lay people off,” Erwin explained. “So you’re going to find they’re going to bring back mature and experienced workers for internships as well as entry-level and college students who are going to bring a whole new feel to the job.”

Although this internship redefinition has only been reported in the States as yet, it leads to wonder how long it will take until economic desperation leads to a similar fad this side of the water.

And what would happen then? Will graduates need to do work experience to be able to get an internship to be able to get a job? Where will it end? Let us know your thoughts now!

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Posted in Inspiring Office Antics, Internship News, News, careers advice

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