Working at Events
Brightsparks & Goodwood

The spectacular estate of Goodwood is the home to the world famous Festival of Speed, Goodwood Revival & Qatar Goodwood Festival. Helping to get people working at events and venues is not uncommon for Brightsparks. With over 400,000 visitors attending the venue each year, Brightsparks routinely supply accredited events & hospitality staff some of the most exclusive areas and to represent some of the biggest global brands from Bentley to McLaren.

Brightsparks staff can be found working in restaurants, boxes & bars across the venue, enabling guests to enjoy the full VIP experience in luxury surroundings.

In 2015, Brightsparks supplied:

• 150+ accredited staff
• Over 15 key event days
• Working 6,400+ hours

 

Click here for the downloadable, printable version.

 

Interested in working at events? Discover jobs today or find the right talent here with Brightsparks.

Startup Graduate Jobs – Is It for You?

There are currently over 5 million businesses in the UK. 99% of these are classed as small or micro-businesses, employing less than 10 people. According to the CIPD Labour Market Outlook, over 60% of employers in the UK are actively looking to hire, and as the economy continues to strengthen, the number of businesses will surely grow, and with it, the number of available roles, particularly at graduate level. What does this mean? Simply put, there are a huge amount of startup graduate jobs – both graduate and entry-level roles in the market. Working at a start-up is very different to a large corporate or a more established business, for a variety of reasons. The purpose of this article is to try and highlight these differences to prospective candidates, so that they may make decisions about where they wish to work in the future on a more informed basis.

The media likes to sensationalise the start-up environment: you’ll ride an alpaca to your meetings and learn to play the kazoo while you’re brainstorming. Everyone sits on ethnically produced beanbags and send their messages via carrier pigeon. It is certainly true that startup graduate jobs can offer certain perks and a different office environment, this shouldn’t disguise the nature of actually working at a start-up company. Start-ups require a level of commitment that you do not often see at larger companies. This is a business that lives and dies on the basis of the work of a few people. If you aren’t pulling your weight, people will know about it, and it will have direct and immediate connotations. Work/life balance is consistently highlighted as an issue working in a start-up environment: there are a lot of late nights, difficult days, and general pressures upon you to get the most out of yourself as possible. This highlights one of the biggest things to recognise about the start-up environment: to be successful there, you need to be fully committed to the cause. For starters, the pay at start-ups is generally markedly lower than the same job at a larger company.  You need to really believe in the product or service that the company offers, as well as your future co-workers’ capacity to deliver it. You have to have a real passion for the mission your company has committed to, whether that be creating a new piece of software to help people do their taxes or brewing beer made from potato peel. Without that passion and willpower, you would struggle to succeed in such an environment.

This links to an important issue for most young graduates. We leave university having only a vague idea of what we want to do going forwards in our lives. A huge part of your early working career is working out what you want to do, and also, equally importantly, what you DON’T want. Your first few jobs can be acid tests for this, isolating responsibilities and companies that you feel that passion for. Therefore, the start-up environment can very quickly be a ‘sink or swim’ sort of deal. If you’re lucky, you’ll click with the brand and the people and have an absolute blast. If not, you’ll know about it pretty quickly. This is why a lot of people join a larger company upon graduation for at least a few years: they gain experience in a stable and more structured environment, working out their passions and strengths, before joining a start-up style company where they can get stuck in from day one.

But don’t despair. While startup graduate jobs can be difficult and hard places to work that place a large demand on their employees, working in such an environment can be a hugely educational experience. As most small companies have a flatter structure, you will be in much more direct contact with more senior people, both internally and externally, and you will have the opportunity not only to learn about the business’ key strategies, but also to influence them and express your opinion on them. As well, it is well-documented that people wear many different hats in a start-up environment. We have touched on the expectation of a strong work ethic, which this obviously links to, but what it also does is give you exposure to many different elements of a company. Not sure what you want to do? In a start-up, it is much easier to have more immediate access to different facets of working life, which would be much rarer in a larger, more established company, where you would have a set role from day one.

The reality of start-ups is that they aren’t for everyone: one person’s pro may be another’s cons. Even if ultimately it isn’t for you, you’ll get a unique experience and hopefully loads of skills to put on your CV.

 

Find startup graduate jobs today or discover the right talent here with Brightsparks.

Brightsparks – Providers of sport event jobs

Here at Brightsparks, we help to successfully provide people with sport event jobs and more. Here’s how we were asked to help Volvic and Tough Mudder:

Objective

• As part of a three year brand activation activity plan between Volvic & Tough Mudder.
• Brightsparks were asked to bring the partnership to life before, during & after Tough Mudder events throughout the UK.

 

Planning & insights

• Stimulated intrigue in Volvic via key POS material
• Utilised key brand messages on Sampling Teams uniform
• Strategically positioned Brand Ambassadors throughout the course

 

Results

• Distributed 130,000 highly targeted samples
• 1.3m participants interactions with brand
• Demand out striped supply on 80% of event days

 

Click here for the downloadable, printable version.

 

Find sport event jobs today or discover the right talent here
with Brightsparks.

Brightsparks & Velocity

Brightsparks, providers of jobs in hospitality and more, teamed up with Velocity to address their staffing problems.

Here are the details:

The Brand

• Velocity provides insider access to the best dining & hospitality experiences globally, including over 1000 restaurants in New York, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Toronto & more.
• Having secured $16m of Series A funding in Summer 2015, Velocity is one of the fastest growing technology companies in the world, featuring in Forbes, GQ, Wired, CNBC, & winning Apple’s Best of 2015 award.

 

Planning & insights

• Being a new product in the restaurant payment space, Velocity were keen to help raise awareness of their app, amongst its key target audience; regular restaurant goers, dinning in small to medium groups with a high level of disposable income.

 

Brightsparks – Providers of jobs in Hospitality

 

Creative solution 

• Brightsparks recruited & trained a dedicated team of brand & customer success ambassadors to liaise & interact with Velocity’s target consumers at the point of sale; in leading restaurants & bars across London.

 

Results

• 286% increase in downloads with the team signing up new customers & supporting them through their first transaction to ensure successful onboarding, thus considerably increasing the likelihood of continued use of the app.

 

Click here for the downloadable, printable version.

 

Discover jobs in hospitality today or find the right talent here with Brightsparks.

Brightsparks & KIND

Brightsparks, providers of promo staffing jobs and more, teamed up with KIND to amplify their snack bars in the UK. Here are the details:

Objective

• Raise awareness of KIND snack bars in the UK
• Enable as many people to try the bars as possible
• Educate consumers about the KIND brand & bars

 

Planning & insights

• Target Audience predominately health conscious
• Educate consumers on ingredients/nutrition and heritage
• Spread the KIND message to trade ensuring core distribution

 

Creative solution 

• Highly targeted diverse national sampling campaign
• Branded stand and outdoor display attracting customers whilst offering product sampling

 

Results

• 100,000 samples handed out during launch across key sites
• 328% uplift in sales post activity
• Secured national coverage across the Tesco Estate
• Roll out across Wholefoods

 

Click here for the downloadable, printable version.

 

Find promo staffing jobs today or discover the right talent here
with Brightsparks.

Experiential Jobs – The Thought Process

It’s important to fit into your audience’s daily routine…

It’s 7am on a Friday morning. David, a twenty-something Londoner hears his alarm go off. The first thing he does is reach for his phone to check all of his notifications: another DJ Khaled Story on Snapchat -#KeysToSuccess; 26 new followers after that Kygo clip was re-posted by @Kygomusic last night, – awesome; 11 Tinder matches? Good swiping game. Then, as he prepares for work, he opens Citymapper to see what time the bus arrives. Six minutes to grab breakfast?! With Apple Pay enabled that’s no bother as he’ll be less than a minute at Pret.

At lunch, David gets another notification. A French couple want to rent his room through Airbnb when he goes home this weekend. “That’ll pay for the train fare” he muses and accepts. He goes out for a bite and decides to take the stairs as he hasn’t done too much walking today. He knows this because of his Fitbit which monitors his activity.

As the end of the work day approaches, he knows he wants to do something, but isn’t 100% sure what that ‘something’ is. He’s looking for experiences in-line with his lifestyle, and finds a great gig in Camden, he invites his friends through the app, books in a snap, and then makes his way over to North London with his paperless ticket.

Indeed, David isn’t alone. He’s a millennial – a generation that is embracing technology unlike any generation before. It’s hard to catch David’s attention, as he installs all kinds of ad-blocking programs and isn’t looking at traditional advertisements. What David wants is something real and authentic; he wants brands to engage him on his level.

On the flip side, brands are left wondering: how do I connect with this audience? How do I make sure my experiential campaign cuts through the noise and reaches the right person at the right time? You’ve been working tirelessly planning that awesome cocktail masterclass to appeal to that trendsetter, urbanite audience. You know this event is different – even special – but after all the hard work the PR team has spent exhausting traditional channels you’re left wondering who will show up? How do I make sure it’s full at all times? Experiential jobs aren’t easy.

The simple answer is: figure out where your audience is. Fit into their daily routine and you’ll get through. Go niche if you need to. What disruptive technology are they using? Who holds an authority in their life? Who do they trust when making decisions on where to go, what to wear and where to stay? Armed with that information, you’ll fit into their lifestyle on their terms, naturally targeting as you go. You’ll change the course of your audience by tapping into their way of doing things. It’s discovery, not advertising. And it’s that easy. Now back to that cocktail masterclass, when is it again?

 

Find experiential jobs today or discover the right talent here with Brightsparks.