TIPi Academy – A New Take on Graduate Schemes
This August TIPi Group launched our first ever ‘TIPi Academy’ – a free two-week intensive course, introducing fresh grads to the complexities of the digital landscape.
A recent study carried out by Marketing Week found that only 3% of 18-24-year olds saw marketing as their best career option. So, to demonstrate how diverse and exciting marketing really is, we binned traditional grad-recruitment techniques and looked at fresh ways to introduce the ambitious youth market to the digital industry. We knew we wanted to build a system that was geared towards the students, putting their education and empowerment first, and our recruitment needs second.
Our Heads of Departments all agreed to work extra hours to teach our group of grads about their department; what they actually do, and why it’s so great, as well as the challenges that can occasionally arise and how to overcome them strategically.
“I feel extremely proud that our staff gave up their own time to offer such an extensive digital marketing course to recent graduates” said Ollie Bishop, Founder and CEO of TIPi Group. “We’ve always believed in passion over scale, so I know the team really enjoyed sharing their own with potential marketing mavericks of the future.”
Not only do the grads gain exposure to the Heads of Departments, to show our students the realities of each of our junior roles, a team of execs spent time talking them through their daily routines and general responsibilities – something that was highlighted by the attendees as a particularly useful feature in the course.
In addition to each structured tutorial, the TIPi Academy covered broader skill sets such as interview preparation and presentation training. The ambition was that by the end of the course, attendees were not only equipped with a stronger understanding of their favoured career routes in the digital industry, they also had built up the necessary skills to help them secure their perfect role as well.
The experience culminated in a Dragon’s Den style pitch, which involved the eight students pairing up and tackling one of three multi-channel briefs provided for them. One attendee said, ‘of every activity and aspect of the Academy, the pitch was definitely the most useful; having the chance to apply what we had learnt over the past weeks onto a hypothetical real-life scenario, it gave us a practical over view of the subject as well as experience working under tight time constraints that will sometimes arise in the role.’
At the end of their tailored series of seminars and workshops, we hoped to have not only inspired our graduates to work in the industry, but in a role that they will now know to be the perfect fit for them.
TIPi Academy will be running again next year and is open to all graduates. If you know anyone who might be interested in applying for next year’s Academy, or are interested in applying yourself, get in touch to register your interest here!