The Prasinus Internship Scheme

Let me paint you a picture. You’re 21 years old and have just spent 3 years studying Finance & Business Management. You have a 2:1, ￡50,000 of debt, and a burning desire to get started in your career as an accountant. You know that the best way to kickstart that career is to get one of the “Big 4” on your CV as soon as possible, and the only way to do that is to land an internship.

But there’s a problem.

Even if you’re successful in beating 50 other candidates for a place on a scheme, you have to find a way to turn up to the swanky corporate offices in the city at 7:30 am every day. You’ve grown up in a Manchester suburb, and as supportive as your family are, they simply cannot afford to support you living income-free in London for 3 months. You don’t have the benefit of helpful family friends with a 4-bed in Streatham to live with, and without the ￡1,000+ per month you need for rent, daily travel and food there’s simply no feasible way you can start your career in the way you want.

This story is just an illustrative example of a very real, very large problem in British society. The role of traditional internships as the first filter for young professionals getting started in vocational careers has a direct link with the fact that 2 in every 3 FTSE 250 companies have no BAME representation on their boards. For so long as a hallmark of corporate recruitment is the “opportunity” to complete an unpaid, in-person internship, huge tracts of business leadership and management are going to remain non-diverse, unrepresentative, and if we’re really honest, implicitly racist.

Now the Prasinus group of businesses is a very long way from the FTSE 250 (for now at least!), but that’s no excuse to sit idly by. I’m therefore proud and excited to be opening applications the first Prasinus Internship Scheme today. This ambitious programme is offering enthusiastic, bright, and driven young people aged 16 – 21 years old the chance to come and work alongside me for a 7-week internship. For now, we have the capacity to host one intern at a time, meaning we will be able to welcome 7 young people to the team during 2021. My hope is that in the medium-term we’ll be in a position to expand the programme further.

So, what makes our scheme different, and different enough that I feel comfortable pouring scorn on traditional internships?!

·      Fully Remote: All of our teams are, and will remain, fully distributed. That means there’s no requirement to be at work in any particular location. As a result, there is zero cost to a Prasinus Intern taking part in the programme, and young people from anywhere in the UK can apply.

·      Everything Provided: Building on that principle of zero cost, we stand ready to provide our interns with anything they need (and don’t already have!) in order to be able to get the most out of the scheme. Have to share a laptop at home? No problem, we’ll send you an extra one for 7 weeks. Don’t have a suitable space to work from? There’s a desk on the way. Haven’t got broadband at home? We’ll get that sorted before you start.

·      No Qualifications Needed: Being great at school and exams does not automatically make you great at business. Equally, struggling to get academic grades does not make you a professional failure. There are no academic requirements to be eligible for a Prasinus Internship. Impress us through the recruitment process and you have the same chance as anyone else, regardless of how good your grades.

·      Targeted: There’s not much point in the other features above if most applications for the scheme come from confident, career-focused young people who have the family advantages to succeed in a traditional internship elsewhere. That’s why I have taken the bold step of limiting eligibility for our scheme to those whose primary residential address is in an area of deprivation, based on the Indices of Multiple Deprivation. To be clear – whilst our scheme unashamedly forms part of our anti-racism agenda, we are excited to welcome interns of any and all background provided they come from a community where opportunity and prosperity are not automatically available.

For more information on what an internship with me and the rest of the Prasinus team will involve, take a look at the application pack on our website. Please also feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions, or any suggestions of how we can make this exciting new area of work a success.