This article was written by Epoch’s Marketing Manager, Ricardo P Martins.

Getting that first job is hard.

Even harder in an industry like ours, filled with self-doubt, giant egos, cut-throat competition, and most recently, the threat of an AI revolution. In this industry, opportunities for new talent to get a foot in the door are few and far between.

At Epoch, we believe that opportunities should be giving to everyone, not just to a few privileged people from the “right” schools and/or “right” backgrounds. So, if we see talent, we want to help.

With that drive in our hearts, we created the Epoch Academy.

The Academy, as we fondly call it internally, is Epoch’s internship programme. It’s our way of giving back to our community, providing opportunities for the next generation, nurturing both the future superstars of the industry and those who haven’t yet had the opportunity (or luxury) to break into the creative workforce yet.

We do that by maintaining strong relationships with a handful of universities across the UK. These are universities that not only produce incredible talent every academic year, but also align with our values of putting people first and building meaningful bonds.

We start creating these bonds by sending a team out to each one of these universities to spend time with the students, getting to know them on a one-to-one basis, hearing their stories, their ambitions and learning about what drives them. The Epoch Academy Workshop, held in Bristol around springtime, is the cherry on top of this beautiful relationship. It’s a day of celebrating all the talent we found along the way and spending quality time with them creating, brainstorming, conceptualising, and most importantly, having loads of fun together.

The Workshop is also an opportunity for them to bond not only with us but also with other young creatives from different universities, backgrounds and walks of life.

It’s important to say that, as we can’t visit all universities across the country, we also take applications for the Epoch Workshop on our website. We make sure that at least 40% of workshop attendees come from these website applications.

The biggest bond of this journey, however, is created during the internship itself. By then, they know us. They’ve met us in their classrooms, connected with us on LinkedIn, and spent a whole day with us in Bristol. So, when they come through big grey door at 54 Queen Square on their first day, it feels like arriving at a friend’s house.

It’s warm. It’s familiar.

Not to toot our own horn, but many of them want to stay.

A few already have.

And those bonds? They are for life.

About Epoch

We are Epoch. We are a global brand agency. We build brands that build bonds.