“Never Again” to “When’s the Next Cohort?”
Chris Lewis – Corporate Programme Lead and Aisha Lysejko – Strategic Advisor
They nearly scrapped their internship programme altogether.
After a tough summer running their programme alone – using a provider to only advertise their roles – the team felt drained. Interns had dropped out. Managers were frustrated. There was pushback from all sides.
“The interns just weren’t ready.”
“It’s more hassle than it’s worth.”
“We can’t see the value.”
Then they found The Brokerage.
The Brokerage Placement Programme (BPP) exists to solve exactly these problems. From day one, we worked with this company to clarify why they wanted interns and build everything around their needs. We helped them choose the right year group, tailor their job specification, and create a strategy that aligned with their goals.
We ran a bespoke insight event to get candidates genuinely excited. When interviews started, the candidates were prepped, passionate, and confident, although this did make it tough for the hiring managers.
But what changed everything was how we extended support to managers as well as the interns.
Managing young people from different classes or cultural backgrounds was new to many of the managers. We helped them rethink onboarding, introduce buddy systems, and swap pub socials for something more inclusive.
But we won’t pretend that it was all plain sailing. Midway through the internship, an issue came up (as they sometimes do). The difference was that we were there to catch it early. A misunderstanding between a manager and an intern was starting to snowball. Instead of letting it spiral, we stepped in, mediated and solved it, ensuring the internship stayed on track.
Throughout the process, we gathered feedback from both interns and managers. Not only did this ensure we knew how things were going, but it meant that we were able to give the company real insight into what worked, what to improve and what to keep doing.
This allows the whole process to go from a ‘good internship’ to a great learning and growth experience for managers and the company as a whole. They improved practices that will benefit their future early-talent hires, grew in confidence in creating an inclusive environment for working-class talent and identified talent that wanted to return.
The team that once said “never again” were one of the first companies to get the ball rolling this year. Why? Because we don’t just help companies fill roles. We help them to build inclusive systems, support their people and turn internships into long-term wins for everyone.
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