Meet Shanai: Work Placement pilot participant

Shanai working with Rachel from Big Old House

For the pilot of the Collaborative Future work placement programme I have been working with Rach from Big Old House, a PR and marketing consultant. Some of Big Old House services include marketing, PR, copywriting, content and social media. Rach has been amazing throughout my time at Big Old House she made me feel very comfortable to talk to her about any questions I had and she was very approachable, and as someone who likes to ask a lot of questions that was a great thing to have.

I am very passionate about magazine writing and social media, which is one of the reasons that I chose to take part in this scheme as I thought it’d be a great opportunity to learn new skills and develop old ones. Since taking part in this scheme I have done a lot of exciting things such as going to a design meeting, which was a great opportunity to get to see inside of an actual office within the field that I would like to go into, and see first hand what happens in design meetings. I have also been doing social media reviews for clients that Big Old House work with. I want to get into either digital marketing, social media or magazine editing so this has been a great opportunity to get a glimpse into the sort of things I might do in the future.

The only downside is that it’s not for longer. I would of loved to work with Big Old House for a while longer to develop more skills and get a better understanding of how the social media sector works. Hopefully with more funding it would be possible for the scheme to run for longer. Overall I have really enjoyed this experience and I think it is a great idea, as a lot of companies don’t like to take you on without any experience, which can make it difficult to get a job. This scheme is a great opportunity to get that experience that you can put on your CV.

For the future I hopefully want to move to Manchester and work within the social media, PR or magazine editing within the fashion industry.

This pilot has been made possible thanks to the support of Works Social, Cleo, Armakuni, Tech Nottingham and s.p.o design. You can find out more about our crowdfunding campaign here and pledge to support future cohorts here.