unicornnews: Brunswick programme completed

The Brunswick Internship Programme, which has been hosted and managed by Unicorn Jobs, reached its conclusion last week as our six aspiring PR professionals completed their 10 weeks of hands-on training.

This programme, run by Unicorn Jobs on behalf of both Brunswick and our sister company Taylor Bennett, was established to address diversity issues in the PR and corporate communications industry. The starting point was our belief that people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are under-represented in this industry, especially on the agency side. The programme is a proactive step to address this problem – it actively encourages people from these communities to consider working in this sector, and then provides them with the skills and knowledge required to launch a PR career.

The programme was developed in association with the University Of East London, through which the six interns were recruited via an intensive selection process.

The six successful candidates were Michael Omudu, Avani Patel, Miriam Wachira, Zubair Ahmed, Olayinka Olagunju and Elaina Ifill. For the last 10 weeks they have received formal and informal training from the Unicorn team, as well as experts at both Brunswick and Taylor Bennett, providing them with a comprehensive and practical introduction to, among other things:

- The PR and communications industry, and the many roles within it.
– The fundamentals of a PR campaign, crafting messages and choosing channels.
– The media, how it works and the way PR and media people work together.
– The City, how it works and the importance of financial and investor PR.
– Communication, presentation, networking and office skills.

They have also met numerous PR professionals and media people along the way (some of whom they have interviewed for “esPResso” – look out for those interviews), received one-to-one careers coaching, and worked on two practical PR projects.

We hope that this will be the first of many such internship programmes. If you’d like to support such work, drop us a line and we’ll tell you more. And if you’re looking to recruit some brilliant new PR talent for your company, we know six of the best! Again, drop us a line.

Posted Monday December 29 2008 by Chris Cooke

Related categories: PR Education & Training