Unbox

☀️ Student Testimonials - Summer edition

We asked Ebani, a 1st year Arts and Sciences student, how she's getting on with her remote placement at Nell Health!

💬 Which company are you working for and why did you choose them?
I'm working at Nell Health. I was intrigued by their proposal of doing science strategy with them, a field I'd never really heard of before. I knew I wanted to intern at a startup this year since it was the best way to understand various departments and actually have my voice valued. I also knew I wanted to apply my science background in a corporate setting. Nell Health gave me the best of both worlds!

💬 What’s the project you’re working on?
I'm a Science Communication Associate, so that means I'm focused on how Nell communicates the science they incorporate into their products. The biggest project I'm working on right now is creating and executing the Nell blog strategy; I research and write content weekly. On top of that, I handle their social media, work on the website content and collaborate with the science team.

💬 How is the team welcoming you?
It's a very welcoming atmosphere! Everyone was always happy to have chat, about Nell or just anything in general. I never felt like I couldn't ask any questions or reach out to anyone to clarify doubts. My feedback is valued and I am treated as an equal!

💬 Overall, how are you finding the placement?
I'm having a really great time meeting new people, learning about business development and getting the unique opportunity to use my scientific knowledge in a corporate environment. It's been a very valuable experience so far!

☀️ Student Testimonials - Summer edition

We asked Zaynab, a 1st year Law student, how she's getting on with her remote placement at Nation.better!

💬 Why did you choose to work for Nation.better?
As an aspiring lawyer, I’m aware of how important legal tech will be in the coming years so this start up stood out to me as it offered the opportunity to learn about this field hands on, and work out if this is something I want to pursue in my career.

💬 What’s the project you’re working on?
The start up is currently focused on building a software that digitally streamlines the immigration process in the UK. Nothing like this capability currently exists so it has been really interesting to see how the team are executing this idea. I have worked on several things, including data capturing legal guidance from the Home Office, researching and drafting a grant application to help fund the project and most recently I am working alongside data scientists who are helping to actually code and build the software.

💬 How is the team welcoming you?
The team has been very welcoming! We have daily briefings, and I often have 1-1 calls with the CEO and Founder of the start up so I feel very well supported in this role. We also have Social Thursdays every fortnight which are lovely as it gives you the opportunity to get to know the team better despite all of us working remotely.

💬 Overall, how are you finding the placement?
As someone with little previous knowledge in tech, I feel like I have learnt so much about the legal tech field, and exactly how technology can be used to modernise legal processes. The CEO has been so supportive in catering the work I am given to areas I am interested in and to skills I want to develop. My placement has been super flexible, and I feel like I have been able to contribute in a valuable way, and not just given menial tasks.

🎉💎 Competition time...!

To celebrate the launch of their membership, our partner Connex Events is giving away ONE FREE PLACE on their cohort!

Their cohort (usually £100/year) provides:
🗺 Career mapping and 1-on-1 coaching
🎤 Exclusive access to industry leading events and conferences
🗓 Learning and networking for your dream industry

To find out more about the CONNEX membership, check out this blog post: https://www.connex.events/posts/connex-cohort-what-bang-do-you-get-for-your-buck

To enter the competition, comment "Employable" on CONNEX's ORIGINAL post. The winner will be announced at the end of next week.

Good luck and congrats to CONNEX for launching their 20/21 cohort!

We are offering students the chance to receive free mentor sessions from Gradvisor, an organisation that gives students the chance to learn from other students that have been successful at securing a role in the most competitive sectors.

Head over to our LinkedIn at the link in our bio to get your free session!

When you sign up, you will automatically be placed into the competition for a free CONNEX membership for a year!

Want to run your own business but not sure how to get started? Confused about how you’d source the necessary funding, expertise, network, and, most importantly, space to think through your ideas and try them out without high risks?

It’s not as complicated as you might think. Moving abroad after university and teaching, studying, or taking up a job in a startup or SME, can offer you the financial stability and time you need to find your footing and start a new chapter after a busy degree.

Moving abroad isn’t just good for starting your own business, but can also allow you to have a bit of time after university to work out what matters to you and what you want to do, while earning a good income, building up your skills, meeting fascinating people, and separating yourself from the crowd if you eventually decide to return home and apply for graduate jobs. The language skills you stand to gain from moving abroad will also open many doors. Reports have shown that pay differentials for bilingual workers can increase anywhere between 5-20% per hour.

While COVID has made travel more difficult in the short term, there will still be plentiful opportunities to move abroad over the coming year(s), and doing so is truly a long-term win.

Join Edu-venture Society for a discussion with two Beijing-based British entrepreneurs about how they built an international career and their own education startups with social impact, and their tips for how you can get started on the road to running your own business.

Places are limited to the first 500 signups so book your space here: https://edu-venture.org/webinar-series/

🌟COOL OPPORTUNITY FROM OUR FRIENDS AT UNIRISE 🎓🔝

UniRise is a social enterprise on a mission to get as many low-income students as possible into the best universities in the UK.

"We've worked with dozens of Russell Group admissions tutors to 'hack' the personal statement and have built an online course for students to learn how to craft the perfect personal statement, alongside 24/7 support from Oxbridge graduates, access to 300 personal statements with admissions tutors' comments on them, and a whole lot more.

Through our network of influencers on TikTok, IG and Youtube, we aim to have 50,000+ students join our online course before the end of 2020.

As part of our mission, we're building a WTF Should I Study at Uni Guide which will be freely distributed to ~700,000 students this September to help them make the best University Choices. You can see an example of the guide we've written for Economics (it's about 80% complete: https://www.notion.so/Economics-3487550be27e426fa39b4d1fea3b9312).

We're looking for high calibre students from the UK's best universities to spend 1 day writing a WTF guide for their subject. We'll then make sure every student applying to university has access to it for September.

The job is 1 day's work and as well as a base-pay, includes a commission scheme (up to £1000) based on how many students buy our course from your WTF page, and we're also looking to recruit a part-time and full-time team of content creators from September so if you do a good job we would love to continue working together to shake up the UK's ridiculous education system."

Email Ollie and Andrew, co-founders of UniRise at [email protected], if you're interested along with your CV, the subject(s) you study and no more than 100 words on why you care about equality of opportunity in education.

👋 MEET THE CAMPUS DIRECTORS - Amartya Maheshwari (Cambridge)

At Cambridge, everything seems to move in clockwork, seemingly never enough time to break away from the rigorous regime of lectures to supervisions to socials. You find it hard to realise how the 8 weeks of term go by and often end up questioning the practical impact you had.

Regardless, everyone wants to make that difference – when I first meet UnbOx I saw potential to break this mould and complement the Cambridge lifestyle.

Why did I join UnbOx? It was refreshingly new. Different to this standard mould, with the potential to spark an entrepreneurial culture across Cambridge. My personal exposure with companies, both big and small has taught me that when it comes to adding value and expressing your individuality – the start-up ethos is the best facilitator.

UnbOx’s sense of purpose resonates well with my aim to make enriching experiences more efficiently accessible for students. Having gone through the gruesome cold-emailing process, I hope to make this difference to the Cambridge career landscape through UnbOx.

More about me: I am studying Economics, which often means a constant chatter of finance and applications – UnbOx has been a nice break from this while continuing to help me mature those soft skills. I’ve also taken a keen interest in event management with different societies at Cambridge and performed at some with Bollywood Troupe.

Feel free to reach out for a chat about anything, would love to hear about your ideas for what Unbox can do and be for students across the UK!

🤔 Why intern at a startup? - ARTS EDITION
Advice from Nat, a first-year English student.

When I first told people that I had chosen to study English at university, the vast majority of adults around me responded with something along the lines of, ‘Okay…but what are you going to do with that?’

The assumption is that we don’t know what we want to do, and I don’t think that’s the case. Most students studying arts subjects can proudly say that they do it out of passion. For me, I knew I wanted to write and tell stories, whatever form that might take. Working at a startup is one way to tell a brand-new story that comes with loads of perks for students like us, who are trying to figure out how they can translate their passion into a profession. Here’s why I think so, based on my personal experience:

1. Small teams mean more responsibility 🙋‍♀️
Bit of a throwback: I did my Year 11 work experience at a small retail company as a marketing intern. The head of marketing was on holiday at the time, and so it was just the marketing assistant and I managing all the social media, press releases and other tasks. I got to take on much more responsibility and try out new things, like photography, live streaming on Facebook and attending events. A lot of startups have even smaller teams, and that may mean that you get to be more integrated in the company, and pick up new transferrable skills along the way.

2. Making connections 🤝
Sometimes ‘networking’ seems like a rather cynical concept, but really there is no harm in meeting new people. Your colleagues can give you so much career advice if you establish a good relationship with them. Recently, I’ve been doing some paid research work because of a connection I made from working at a startup. From that, I’ve also learnt more about journalism and the publishing industry. The more connections you make, the more diverse and informative conversations you might have with people, and the more you might learn about the fields that interest you.

3. Your subject skills are more useful than you think 📌
My degree consists of reading and writing, and that’s about it. For the longest time, I really thought I would either have to become a writer/journalist, or give that up entirely after uni. Likewise, there is a common misconception that a lot of creative skills in the arts are not practical. But who do you think writes all the Facebook posts and ‘branded content’ that you see daily? Who designs the websites you go on and Instagram feeds that you scroll past? If nothing else, arts degrees teach student writers and artists to do their job pretty efficiently. You should definitely expand your skillset nonetheless, but startups will value your creative skills and that’s a good starting point.

4. Tell your own story 📖
There’s beauty in being different. If you tell a prospective employer that you interned at some big famous corporation, they might be impressed, but chances are they already know what you did there. Given the size of these firms, you probably didn’t get as much visibility and responsibility either. If you tell them you interned at a startup, you would have so much more under your belt to tell a unique story about what they do, what you did there, and why you chose to work there. It will help you showcase your adaptability, open-mindedness, thirst for new challenges, and above all, it will make you stand out.

👋 MEET THE CAMPUS DIRECTORS - Alex Choi (KCL)

Being fascinated by tech from a young age, entrepreneurship came almost naturally to me. My first interactions with startups were after learning to code online and by meeting other people doing the same and together we started a games development company. Now I am co-founder of a tech startup which aims to connect university students through sports.

When I heard about UnbOx I was immediately drawn. As an Economics and Management student, many of my friends and coursemates have always seen the corporate route as the only route. Having had experience in startups, I knew that this is not the case as so many startups offer valuable experiences that traditional placements might not have.

At a networking event someone once told me that what you learn in a startup in 3 months could take 3 years to learn in a traditional company and I somewhat agree because even as an intern, in a startup you might have the chance to input in all aspects of the company and make a real contribution.

Startups can make impact in so many different areas, whether it is investing your spare change in the stock market or using machine learning to predict behaviour, there’s something interesting for everyone. I got into startups because I love applying tech to so many different environments. So whatever your passion is, I hope UnbOx can help you find it! I hope by representing UnbOx at King’s College London that I can attract more students to exciting and unique placements!

📢 Update:
We have accepted 80 applicants out of 1000 who will now go through our student-startup matching process.

It has been an incredibly difficult process to select the incoming cohort, but we will continue offering resources and careers advice on our page that is accessible to everyone. Stay around so you don't miss any future opportunities! 😊

👋 MEET THE CAMPUS DIRECTORS - Jonathan Low (Warwick)

Everyone at Warwick seems to be constantly striving to be successful and impactful. An unspoken ultimatum lies over the students - find a job now, or you’re a failure. Your applications to large firms must make a case that you have spent your whole life preparing for that job, something that simply isn’t the case for most students. We then spend many hours, tinkering with our image and brand until we’re the carbon copy of another successful applicant that we know of, hoping that this will secure our future.

Unbox really challenges that. Students are matched with startups, where they can wear a variety of hats and discover what they’re most suited to. There is no perfect application: we accept students from a variety of cultural and subject backgrounds based on their passion for growth and the skills they can bring to the table. We disrupt the Catch-22 of ‘needing experience to get experience’ and provide value for both startups and students. Most of all, students do hard work and are forced to think critically by working on real, impactful projects.

I read maths at Warwick and I'm broadly interested in AI governance, start-up ecosystems, effective altruism and consultancy. Feel free to reach out to me if you're interested in partnering with Unbox or learning about the above areas.