Career Workshop

Each year, thousands of young people apply for work experience placements to help them learn about the world of work and gain an idea about what they might like to do as a future career. In this article, James Pattinson (1998) explains how offering work experience placements can provide benefits to businesses, based on his experience as Ordnance Officer and co-founder of Reluctantly Brave.

in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world where businesses are increasingly confronted by “wicked problems” – intractable, messy and often contradictory challenges, imagination needs to be at the centre of strategy. At Reluctantly Brave, we use “Business Imagineering” as a methodology to simultaneously solve problems and build capacity on every project we take on.

We find imaginative insights and solutions to problems by harnessing the dynamics of difference. Diversity is proven to deliver superior business results. We build teams, large and small, at speed. Our teams are made up of real diversity of thought: all-age, multiethnic, multi-talented, worldwide. Our constellation of experts ranges from 16-year-old schoolkids to Nobel Prize winners.

Our (Young) Braves are at the core of Reluctantly Brave. They are 16–24 year olds who work with our interdisciplinary team, learning to be strategists by doing. Students securing work experience is a key part of our approach. Doing/offering work experience therefore benefits everyone – young people, us and our clients.

Young people get to incubate their skills and receive mentoring from our Partners. Their work experience may even transition to paid work as we build a pool of different thinkers to give strategic insight for the likes of Kellogg’s, Boots Opticians and Jagex. For this unique approach, last year our (Young) Braves programme won us a National Diversity Award (the only business to do so).

I founded Reluctantly Brave with Dawood Gustave and my brother Jonathan (OP, 2000) in 2012. Dawood and I met at Oxford University and came from opposite backgrounds but were united on our shared values. Enthused by our heightened creative outputs when working together we sought to set up a programme that encompassed this fusing of perspectives. (Young) Braves has done just that, mixing people from our local state schools and Oxford University, people who left school at 16 with Masters students. We ensure that each group of (Young) Braves is made up from a range of backgrounds, be it gender, socioeconomic, religion or others. Their diversity brings us new, exciting ideas and ensures everybody has a voice and is heard. This summer we’ve had a total of eight Perseans working with other 16-year-olds from local schools in Hackney and University students from Bristol, UCL and Texas on a variety of projects.

If you’d like to find out more how work experience can work for you, or how our ‘Business Imagineering’ methodology can help solve your pressing business challenge, please drop me a line: james@reluctantlybrave.com

If managed properly, work experience should deliver a real benefit to your business:

1. See yourselves through fresh eyes. Young people have an uncanny knack for seeing through bull s***!

This is keeps us on our toes.

2. Gain rich insight and ideas for present and future recruitment, retention and market needs. Young people are the future after all.

3. Be inspired by energy and enthusiasm. Give young people meaningful opportunities and set them up for success – you’ll be pleasantly surprised and your business will be more vibrant for it.

We’Re ReLuCtAntLy BRAve, experts in “Business Imagineering” – the way to create strategies that solve challenges in a volatile world. Our award winning (Young) Braves programme is central to how we do this for our clients.