Responding to this.

Mac writes:

I finish a Jobbridge in marketing tomorrow. The company I’m working for has revenue in the millions but has never had any marketing before. They don’t need me any more as the impact of my work for how the company is run is going to take time to deal with. No job for me!
During my internship…..
– I took the 28 brands they represent and developed verticals to categorise them. They had never bothered to do this before.
– I have developed marketing strategies for each of the verticals under the two brands.
– I have designed and built the company two websites, one for their Irish brand and one for the UK.
– I set up all their analytics.
– I have been using SEO to progressively improve their rankings in search.
– I have built HTML email templates and written the copy for a number of email campaigns.

There is more but you get the idea. At the start of this week I was contacted by a recruiter who came across me on LinkedIn and wanted to talk about a position. He had been impressed by my work so invited me for an interview. During the interview yesterday I told him that my current position was as an intern. He informed me that although I had the skills required for a number of jobs on their books no employer would be willing to employee me until someone else had employed me first. He also let me know that no amount of unpaid experience would improve my CV as the only thing missing from it was a paid marketing job. I have basically been told that I have to find someone willing to hire me to do marketing before I can get a hired to do marketing. .

I’ll let people decide for themselves whether the system is stacked against graduates.

(Pic from the Farmleigh Irish Intern Asia scheme)