Enterprise Nation

If you are considering taking on student help in your home business, enternships.com could be the site for you. It’s a portal that connects students and graduates to entrepreneurial work placements. We meet the team behind the site and pose some questions.

What is Enternships and when did you start the business?

Enternships.com is a portal which connects students and graduates to entrepreneurial work placements. These placements are predominantely in start-ups and small businesses but can also be 'intrapraneurial' placements in larger firms.  The site was fully launched only yesterday!

Who runs the company and are you all full time or growing the business in your part time?

Rajeeb Dey is the Founder and CEO of the company. He started working on the concept properly after graduating from University in June 2008. The other team members are Nazem Abd-Allah and Leah Magoye who work as Business Development Managers. We are all working on the venture pretty much full-time (there is no paid employment on the side!)

How did you come up with the idea for the business?

The site initially operated as a simple listing service for companies to post placements. This was started three years ago when Raj was President of Oxford Entrepreneurs - the society for entrepreneurs at Oxford University. We were one of the largest societies on campus with over 4000 members. Small firms were approaching to ask if Raj could help them promote work placement opportunities to the entrepreneurial students at Oxford. He then realised that whilst large corporates have the time and resources to do the 'milkround' there isn't such a scope for small businesses or start-ups. Likewise students are becoming increasingly interested in business and entrepreneurship and there is no one place for them to find these types of exciting opportunities and thus the concept of developing Enternships.com into a recruitment portal emerged.

Did you need start-up funding? If so, where did that come from?

Not really. Raj has spent his own money to pay for various things e.g. legal costs and IT related however he negotiated a "sweat-equity" arrangement with the web developers which has helped keep the initial outlay relatively low.

How do you plan to market your services and the site?

The marketing to students will be multi-pronged through Careers services, Freshers fairs, student societies - especially the entrepreneurship societies. We have a good relationship with the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship who will be able to help us promote Enternships via their "Flying Start Rallies" which are held at universities across the UK. 

We're looking to approach companies through traditional PR routes e.g. mass media and targeted trade press but without any marketing budget as such we will rely a lot on word of mouth which has been great so far!
 
We have been fortunate to have been featured in the latest CBI Report "Future Fit: Preparing Graduates for the World of Work" which has led to numerous university careers services getting in touch with us. 

Working from different home offices, what kind of gadgets and technology do you use to keep in touch?

We have Blackberries and iPhones in the team and use the Blackberry Messenger service as well as Gmail Chat to communicate with each other. We're permanently pinging emails and messages back and forth :-)

What is the one thing you enjoy most about starting & growing the business from home?

The flexibility to work how you like and having all the home comforts around you! 

How will the end of 2009 look for Enternships?

We hope to have supported hundreds of students in finding work placements for the Summer of 2009 - and to have raised public awareness of the brand and concept of an 'enternship' both amongst students and companies with hopefully a few hundred companies signed up in the run up to the big push for Freshers Fairs 2009/10.

Nazem Abd-Allah, Leah Magoye and Rajeeb Dey talk to Enterprise Nation 

• Enternships.com