Introducing the Strawberry Academy - helping local talent shine

Posted on May 31st, 2010 Tags: Strawberry Academy

As one of East Yorkshire’s leading marketing and design agencies, we are committed to sourcing and mentoring young talent from the local area. This is why we developed the Strawberry Academy - to give the region’s budding designers and marketing professionals of the future a taste of agency life and on-the-job experience.

The Strawberry Academy is open to students of all ages – from 14 years right through to university leavers and beyond. It is designed to help kick-start careers and also gives us the opportunity to work with young people that have new, fresh and interesting ideas. We have close working relationships with our local education establishments to help source potential candidates – however direct enquiries are always welcome.

The Strawberry Academy is broken down into five categories:

Work experience:

• For school students ages 14-15 years old completing their GCSEs.
• One week’s work experience as part of school programme.
• The student is given a project to complete throughout the week, where they learn to use key software programmes and manage their time.
• We work with the following schools – Hull Collegiate, Hymers College, Wolfreton, South Hunsley, Cottingham, Bishop Burton, Andrew Marvell, Hessle, St. Mary’s College, Longcroft.

Apprenticeship placements:

• For students aged 16 or over.
• In conjunction with the National Apprenticeship Scheme.
• On-the-job experience with mentoring from other members of the team.
• A real job from day one.
• We work with Hull Business Training Centre – all enquiries should be made through them.

Graduate placements:

• Up to one year-long, full time work placements for university students.
• Putting the skills they have learnt at University into practice.
• Client-facing and working on creative projects from day one.
• An ideal opportunity to gain valuable experience before graduating.
• We also cater for individuals who want to spend a day or so here at Strawberry and get a feel for agency life.

Graduate Trainee:

• Fast track learning for talented graduates.
• Will work with clients from day one to offer a first rate service.
• Mentored by other members of the Strawberry team.
• Given as much responsibility as they can handle.

Investing in our future

In addition to providing work experience and mentoring via the Strawberry Academy, we are also committed to helping members of the Strawberry team enhance their existing skills.

Each individual member of the Strawberry team has an annual training budget to take part in seminars, courses and workshops that they think will be of benefit to them.
In the past, our team members have taken part in Business Link events, Prince2 courses and worked to achieve Google AdWords accreditation, in addition to attending industry exhibitions throughout the UK.

Helping the local community:

We take part in many events throughout the city, to share our knowledge and provide advice to those who need support. In the past, we have:

• Presented lectures to college and university students.
• Talked at business events to share our knowledge of SEO.
• Held seminars to teach local business people the benefits of internet marketing.
• Given presentations about ‘cheap’ marketing for charitable organisations.
• Spoken at many networking events about the benefits of Internet marketing and online PR.

A system that works!

Several members of our team have taken part, or are currently taking part in the Strawberry Academy. We have two apprentices working with us at the moment, a university student on placement and several graduate trainees. In fact, our Creative Director is the original Strawberry Academy graduate!