interns

Social Media Week London is all about the people. This year with over 260 events and 20,000+ tickets booked it was bigger than ever.

Behind the scenes the Chinwag team swells in number as we do our best to tackle the avalanche of administration, emails, logistics and communications that SMWLDN brings with it.

This year we had an exceptional crop of helpers who supported us through what was, to put it mildly, a rather busy few months. We couldn’t have done it without them.

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.

The return of Social Media Week London (SMWLDN) 24-28 Sept will see a number of changes to the way SMWLDN works including the creation of several content-specific hubs and the launch of the SMWLDN work experience programme.

We're on the hunt for some space for the SMWLDN HQ in the run-up to September's event to house the team including the work experience folks and our fantastic volunteers that between them mean we can keep the majority of SMWLDN events free for everyone to attend. Can you help?

The importance of work experience was underlined at Chinwag's recent Careers Day (see our round-up blog for some top CV tips). There's plenty of competition for the choicest work experience or intern positions, because they provide such a powerful point of differentiation for candidates, not to mention heaps of useful job-hunting contacts.

So, with London's biggest collaborative event, Social Media Week returning to London in September (24-28), what better time to offer a lucky few the chance to get their teeth stuck into one of the largest digital events to hit London? Find out more about what's involved and how to apply below.

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.

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:

The benefits of having an intern are numerous. It’s not just cheap labour and someone to make the tea.

Many organisations are reaping the rewards that come with an internship and a skilled graduate.

It was a case of unknown territory when Chinwag took on Gregory, our first tech intern. It took time and effort to get him started, but the investment paid off and the work he did was invaluable.

So, in the sprit of this, we’ve created a series of blog posts, from an employer's perspective, that aim to cover everything you need to know about offering an internship.

Hot on the heels of the digital placement program, news reaches us of another initiative in the North West for recent graduates looking for careers in the interesting world where new media meets TV and radio, North West b.TWEEN TV Platforms.

This Autumn could be a testing time for some of the 400,000 graduates looking for a digital career, with the number of vacancies taking a dip, competition will be hotter than ever.

Internships and work placements, when well executed well, can be a fast-track way to getting a dream job as well as providing employers with seasoned recruits.

We're big fans at Chinwag with two interns currently learning about the industry and providing valued help in a busy environment.

News of another great scheme has reached Chinwag Towers. Creative digital support agency Northwest Vision and Media are working to help make the region’s new talent make the right start - and partnering with agencies keen to find them.