work placements

We are excited to announce the 3rd Chinwag Careers Day on Friday 24th May, in association with Digital Shoreditch 2013.

After the success of previous events, you can expect a bigger and better schedule focused on finding and filling jobs in the Digital sector.

We are very excited to announce the launch of Chinwag's first ever Careers Day on Wednesday 23rd May in association with Digital Shoreditch 2012 and supported by Vitamin T. 

Chinwag has teamed up with the lovely people at Digital Shoreditch to bring you the very first Chinwag Careers Day, focused around jobs in Digital. The day centres on getting a job and building careers including mentoring, CV/social media advice, portfolio reviews plus a careers fair featuring leading employers.

The Careers Day will be free for all you job seekers to come along to, just keep an eye out on @Chinwag and on our blog for the sign up form. 

It's that time of year - graduates are coming to the end of their university lives and school leavers are completing their final exams.  It's the perfect time to hire a fantastic intern - and we've noticed that many companies are already on the hunt.

We're big fans of intern programmes at Chinwag and have had a few successful candidates pass through Chinwag Towers.  We've recently seen such a strong interest, we've decided to gather the information together and summarise in a blog post, or something more industrial, if necessary.

Hot on the heels of our recent summary of juicy intern roles, news reaches Chinwag Towers from Channel 4 of their Generation Next Programme.

Focusing on potential rather than age, skills or qualifications, seven lucky interns will get an in-depth ten week placement,

Spring has sprung. Even the plant life inside Chinwag Towers is showing signs of life despite its usual mistreatment.

It's also the time of the year when soon-to-be graduates, and those about to embark on their gap year start the hunt for a worthwhile pursuit to fill the coming months.

Following our call for internships and work placements a few weeks back, here's a round-up of the response we got. For enterprising souls, there's certainly plenty of experience to be gained at some great digital companies, check out the list of available placements: 

• addidas
• PharmiWeb Solutions
• INPROMO GmbH
• Flip Media FZ LLC
• Amberlight Partners
• FootballUnited.com
• Global Beach
• fish in a bottle
• Pitchup.com
• Direct Traffic Media
• Browser Creative
• ParcelPoke Limited
• Carve Consulting
• Great Marketing Works
• Smarkets
• Guru
• Bluw-i
• Halpern Cowan
• Quirk Emarketing Ltd
• Brightlemon Ltd
• Spotless Interactive
• OpenBusiness.cc

This list was put together purely as a rough'n'ready trial, it's a list of internships and work placements only. If you're looking for a full-time or freelance role, check out the full listings on our sister site, Chinwag Jobs (hint: there's a list of the latest and greatest to your right-hand side).

We'd also love to hear from employers and interns on their experiences, so do leave a comment or drop us a line. It's always good to get a steer on the state of the industry, both good and bad.

In spite of job prospects for graduates looking bleak, there appears to be lots of opportunities in the digital sector to score some fantastic internship opportunities.

Roll up, roll up, we'll be publishing the list of programmes at the end of this week...if you'd like to include your company's programme/requirements, fill out the simple form and yes, it's all free, just something we're trying out.

Last week, a student on the hunt for work experience, posted to Chinwag's uk-design email discussion list:

"I am looking to do a web dev / usability / UX type internship but the results of my search thus far have been disappointing. Most of the places I have been in touch with seem to want a general office bod who will do menial tasks for free under the guise of "work experience". I'm aware that most of these positions are unpaid, and I'm happy to do that, as long as I'm learning something along the way.

Fortunately, the good folks on the uk-design list responded en masse and we later heard that she'd found a suitable spot in under 24 hours. What followed, was a flurry of firms asking for interns.

We're big fans of intern programmes at Chinwag and have had a few successful candidates pass through Chinwag Towers. Seeing such a strong interest, we've decided to gather the information together, and summarise in a blog post, or something more industrial, if necessary.

If your firm, or you know people looking for real interns and not just office juniors, please do get them to fill out the form below.

There's some exciting positions that have been added already from the likes of Pharmiweb and Adidas, so add yours. We'll leave the form open for a few days.

There are a lot of challenges for any company taking on an intern.

From where to advertise the vacancy to the costs involved in hosting and training can all be a drain on company resources.

It's been challenging at Chinwag, so I bent the ear of Dominic Potter, co-founder of Internocracy, a company that helps employers set up and run their internship programmes.

Here's a brief run-down of his top-tips to consider before taking on an intern: