Students in the Midlands are buzzing with anticipation with less than four days remaining before entries for B-Hive 2011 close. Designed to help graduates make their first step into the highly competitive creative industries, the competition sees graduates respond to creative briefs for the chance to win 30 rare industry placements at Birmingham’s top creative firms.
Eight new companies will join the B-Hive panel in 2011, including pioneering companies Bullring, Chapter, First Utility, The NEC Group, Orb Creative, Subaru, Substrakt and Tomorrow People, bringing even more opportunities to Birmingham’s graduates than the previous year. Now in its third year, B-Hive has gone from strength to strength since its launch in 2009 by Pitch Consultants, specialist recruiters for the creative industries, and is recognised as one of the Midlands’ most innovative graduate recruitment initiatives, helping to retain young creative talent within the region.
B-Hive 2011 sees Pitch Consultants team up with Business Birmingham, the city’s inward investment programme, to highlight the employment opportunities for graduates in Birmingham’s vibrant creative sector in a bid to improve the city’s graduate retention figures. Neil Rami, Head of Business Birmingham, believes schemes like B-Hive are key to retaining graduate talent in the Midlands:
“Business Birmingham is working alongside partners to promote the city as a successful business location which offers a highly skilled talent pool to potential investors. Encouraging graduates to remain in the city to develop their career is part of our strategy to build a strong talent base in the region.
“The B-Hive initiative is a first class example of Birmingham’s businesses pulling together to showcase the city as a true creative hub, home to many innovative agencies and brands that put Birmingham on the map as a leading centre for the creative industries.”
The competition sees students across Birmingham’s higher education institutions battle it out in five different categories - marketing, PR, advertising, graphic design and web design for the opportunity to win work placements within these competitive fields. This year’s brief centres around showcasing the city as a gourmet capital. Entrants are required to bring their most innovative ideas for promoting Birmingham as a culinary hotspot to the table, in a bid to raise the profile of the city as a foodie destination. After submitting a written response to a life like brief, students that make the shortlist will present their ideas in a ‘Dragons Den’ style pitch to top industry experts from Birmingham’s creative sector.
Ollie Purdon, Director of Pitch Consultants, who has over eight years experience recruiting within the creative sector said:
“No matter what area of the marketing and creative industries you specialise in, competition for entry level jobs is intense. B-Hive is now a highly recognised scheme and provides a fantastic platform from which to develop your career. There’s a growing list of success stories from previous winners and clear evidence that having B-Hive on your CV puts you ahead of the game with employers in the region.”
With unemployment in the Midlands region notoriously high, B-Hive’s innovative approach towards graduate recruitment has resulted in 13 previous winners of the competition gaining permanent employment within the creative industries as a direct result of their B-Hive experience.
CASE STUDY
Mandy Wong, overall winner of the Graphic Design category in 2010, gave her thoughts about the importance of the scheme:
“I know placements aren’t the easiest thing to get, especially at so many great agencies. That’s why B-Hive is so rewarding; you don’t just win a title, which doesn’t mean much at the end of the day, it helps you get your foot in the door, with real industry experience. It has opened so many doors for me and has led to a full time job at one of the participating agencies.”
