News

14 May 2009 No Actions Speak Louder Than Words…

If your business is anything like mine you will get inundated with calls from students looking for work experience, especially at this time of year as the long summer looms ahead.

We politely ask them to send over their CV and, the minority that are not obviously a blanket email or CV sent to every event management company in the region, we always look through and file them safely for a time when we may want to give them a call – after all it’s the least we can do if they want experience in the events industry and are willing to work for free for a foot in the door.

However last year we took a different tact, we launched the Rapport ‘Spaces’ competition, this was open to all students in the North West (or further a field if they had heard of it!) and asked them to come up with innovative and creative concepts for a fictional networking event. The prize was every graduating students dream; 2 weeks work experience or a £1000 in cash!

We hoped to receive inspired entries from bright young minds, untainted by past events experiences, which would provide us with the insight to keep our events imaginative and original.

We did our bit too, we told every student who rang the office to enter, we promoted ‘Spaces’ in the universities, as well as industry and local press and even gave a lecture at Chester University.

But the end of April deadline has been and gone and we received one entry…and it was late. So much for proving that the bad press students receive is wrong, they had the perfect chance to further their career with a vibrant and successful company, or pay for their ticket to backpack round Europe over the summer. But despite being eager enough to pick up the phone, it seems no-one is willing to actually do any work for their opportunity.

These are the future of our industry, well if they bother to apply for any jobs that is!

Chris Teague, Rapport Events

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