Here at The Guild we’re proud to have such a strong relationship with Bath Spa University, a key aspect of which is being able to engage with the student body. The relationship between our two organisations has also had a real beneficial impact on our members who have started to grow their businesses.  Below are three brief case studies detailing our members interactions with BSU focussing on their internship programme:

Tom Lewis, Founder of Cowork Inc.

Tom decided he wanted to recruit an intern, as he found that the freelancers based at The Guild were becoming too busy to help him, and he realised he had enough work to offer a job to a full timer.  The problem was that it was a big financial commitment.
Tom knew about BSU’s internship programme partly through The Guild’s partnership with them, but he was really influenced by the other hub members who were taking on BSU interns and giving very good feedback about their performance.  The fact that BSU helped him with 50% of minimum wage for the 6 month period of the internship made it much less of a risk and made him more confident to offer the chosen candidate the position.
BSU helped with the initial programme, and the forms that needed to be completed were fairly simple.  Candidates got in touch directly, which meant interviews were simple to arrange.  Getting paid by BSU was quick and painless.
“I’d definitely recommend the programme to other companies.  One thing I would do differently next time is do my own advertising for the position, alongside the BSU portal- so I could reach the widest possible number of graduates.”

 

Frazer King, KvsK

Frazer King aka KvsK has been a member of The Guild since September 2013, but over the past year he has gone under a growth phase meaning that he needed to recruit new internal staff and he ideally wanted a local team straight out of University.

He became aware of the Bath Spa University and Santander Internship scheme through The Guild’s relationship with the University, via The Guild’s Members Intranet.

Frazer ended up taking on two interns with one of them recently becoming a full time member of staff. For anyone looking to grow their business, Frazer really backs the Santander University scheme “being backed by Santander makes it a good package, and gives you the introduction to some great new local talent”

Dave Jarman, Head of Enterprise and Employability at Bath Spa University: “Bath Spa University is packed to the rafters with aspiring creatives and entrepreneurs so it’s great to collaborate with The Guild and its members to unleash some of that young talent as interns into exciting local companies who both need a bit of business development capacity but can also offer professional development opportunities to our students and graduates. We hope it makes a big difference to the prospects of both companies and student participants. It’s been pretty painless to put this together and we look forward to doing more in the future.”