The 360 Recruitment Advertising Blog

Perhaps this sounds a little brutal and potentially a touch dangerous, but when it comes to 360°’s attitude to work experience students, it really is a demonstration of our commitment to giving young people a real, no, VERY real exposure to life in the workplace.

We believe young, talented and determined students should be treated like any employee at 360°. They shouldn’t just be given menial tasks, such as tea making or photocopying or just left to twiddle their thumbs if they have ambitions to be a designer or marketing professional.

So, do we practice what we preach?  This is what our most recent work experience student, Ceylan had to say.

‘I’ve been at 360° for a total of 6 days and have never had any issues with the way I work, what I work with, or any of the staff. I’ve appreciated the laid-back, stress free environment while getting plenty of great work done which is not how I expected an office to be. I expected people running round, chasing up about deadlines and a few problems here and there, but 360° is the opposite.

Everyone gets along very well, making each other about 10 cups of coffee or tea every day, advising each other about the work and I’m glad I had the chance to be a part of it. I’ve never been bored and I’ve also learnt many things about the recruitment and advertising world, I’d never thought about it before but I never realised how different recruitment advertising and advertising really is. I’ve spoken a lot with Kirsty about this and the copy part of an ad, which is quite complex. Because of this I now look at advertisements differently.

Teresa showed me an example of how much a small black and white ad cost and I was shocked, I now wonder how much the ads cost I see every day! I analyse them in glimpses and notice mistakes or on the train I would even stare at them wondering what I would do to improve it. Not only do have an eye for advertisements now I’ve also learnt how to use many programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Quark Xpress (thanks to Mark) on Apple Macs, both I haven’t fluently used before.

Everyone here has taught me at least one thing, even if it is a simple keyboard shortcut like Ravinder, who claims to be the queen of shortcuts [she is, though – Mark], who also showed me an example of a production order and how to use a previous design with new copy. I’m very grateful I had the chance to do this for work experience and I’m proud to say I worked for 360°, I hope to work in this exact kind of office in future.’

Ceylan Hassan, Ravensbourne School.

Ceylan Hassan

Ceylan only had 6 days with us but in that time, she got involved in brainstorming ad concepts, corporate ID, internal comms, video, print, a client meeting, presentations, media buying and the occasional free lunch. And, not only did she meet the demands of a busy agency, she also added a fresh dimension to 360°, not least in the Creative dept, where her input enriched the work that was produced.

Details from ceylan’s sketchbook diary

The key to a successful working experience is to ensure the student understands how the whole agency works, not just a part of it. Even if their aim is work in one department, it can only be put into a realistic context by spending time with the other departments to see how everything works together.

Putting together a rough edit for a video to show a client

Ceylan’s Nuffield Health campaign which was picked over the CD’s idea, well really!

So Ceylan not only worked in the Creative dept, she also worked with client services to appreciate every element of the process from brief to publication.

When we look closely at what we do for our clients, namely to develop their employer brand through better practises, communication, and the importance of nurturing talent, why should we be any different? Work experience is vital to our industry as it allows young talent to dive into recruitment marketing and explore its opportunities and, as the saying goes, no one ever grows up wanting to be in recruitment advertising, but that could change.

Mark