In-depth

Q&A: Rajeeb Dey, CEO Enternships

We spoke to Rajeeb Dey, chief executive of enternships.com and co-founder of StartUp Britain about the importance of work experience and skill sharing.

15 Mar 2012

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Can you describe the aims of your 'organisation' in three words?

Internships for self-starters

You founded enternships.com in 2009 while at university, what or who inspired you?

Whilst the platform launched officially and I incorporated the company in 2009 (a year after graduating in 2008) www.enternships.com started as a simple listing service which I set up whilst studying at the University of Oxford where I was President of Oxford Entrepreneurs, one of the largest networks of student entrepreneurs in Europe.

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Companies were approaching me to advertise opportunities as they were keen to reach entrepreneurial candidates. Over time, it became evident that more and more small companies wanted to reach students and, with no proactive marketing, word of mouth led to more than 160 placements being advertised on this very simple listing site.

I realised that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) struggle to find talent and lack the recruitment budgets of blue-chip firms to undertake the traditional milkround' and decided something had to be done. Enternships provides these companies with visibility on campus and serves as a central place for start-ups to reach out to talent.

How have things changed since that launch both in organisational and industry terms?

We launched at the start of the youth unemployment crisis. Graduate unemployment is at an all time high and students and are looking for ways of gaining experience and accessing work opportunities.

All too often students fall into a graduate job, often into the City as all they are exposed to is jobs in banks, law firms, accountancy firms and so on. However, for many, those roles are simply not appealing but there is a lack of awareness of the alternatives and, right now, there are far fewer of these roles available.