Making an Instant Impact

Making an Instant Impact Danielle and colleague Rishi My name’s Danielle and I’m a Third Year Business Economics with Spanish student at Exeter. I’m currently in Madrid for my Erasmus year, but  this summer I joined Instant Impact a graduate recruitment agency specialising in placing graduate talent into Start-ups and Scale-ups, as a Resourcer. Who are ‘Instant Impact’ and what made me approach them? Instant Impact stood out to me as a company, and in particular a graduate recruitment agency, because of its focus on fast-growth Start-ups, Scale-ups SMEs. They’re dedicated to showing graduates that there’s more out there than the corporate grad schemes, and this really fitted in with my own entrepreneurial aspirations. Since coming to university, I became quite involved in small businesses and projects that I believed would make a real difference to the student community. I’m still in the process of making Exeter receipt free which will hopefully come into play during the 2016/17 academic year â€" watch this space. I’ve always been very entrepreneurial; as a child I would charge my sister interest on loans and even make her pay for hand-me-downs to the dismay of my Mum! I’ve always been very entrepreneurial; as a child I would charge my sister interest on loans and even make her pay for hand-me-downs to the dismay of my Mum! However, now that I’ve realised it’s best not to exploit family, I’ve co-founded a technology company alongside my studies with a couple of friends from Exeter. The technology company I set up was taking a pause over the summer so the team could decide the direction we wanted to take it. I decided to branch out and investigate internships in other SMEs. I came across Instant Impact and was attracted by the companies they work with; the likes of Deliveroo, GoodLord and ProperCorn, who are all pushing the boundaries of the latest tech and challenging how consumers interact with traditional organisations. I signed up online and Ted (my now colleague) rang me up whilst on the Uni surf trip in France. I was mid wetsuit putting-on (not an ideal situation when talking to your potential employer), but within a week I had returned home, packed my bags and moved to London to work at Instant Impact as a summer Resourcer. What does a day in the role of Resourcer look like? I was immediately made to feel a part of the team, training took a couple of days and from the beginning I was given responsibility. Straight away I had vacancies to source candidates for and the opportunity to interview them myself. Previously I’d worked for an IT reseller; I loved my time there but the position was largely based on hard sales like cold calling. Here I have the opportunity to build more of a relationship and rapport with the graduates I speak to; I can relate to them and it’s genuinely great fun matching them to positions. On a day to day basis the role is varied. One day I might be on a promotional trip to Graduation Week at universities around the country, or I could be having a chat on the phone with someone I immediately want to place in “the coolest start-up”, knowing they’d be just perfect for it. On a day to day basis the role is varied. One day I might be on a promotional trip to Graduation Week at universities around the country, or I could be having a chat on the phone with someone I immediately want to place in “the coolest start-up”, knowing they’d be just perfect for it. I loved my time at Instant Impact; they have iBeers every Friday afternoon to go through everyone’s highlights of the week and we even went to a dance class one evening as an office social. It’s this kind of start-up culture that makes work so enjoyable. What’s coming next? I’m in Madrid for my Erasmus year so I’m getting stuck in to studies and life in the sun. I’ll be back in Exeter for my final year in 2017, so who knows what the future holds.