Over the summer, our Oxford office got six new (temporary) team members as we welcomed work experience students from two local schools for a full week at Versantus.
Our team have been hosting work experience students for almost 10 years now and it's an important part of our calendar. It's a chance to give something back to the community we're part of, and to get to know people who might one day work with us or buy from us. But mostly it's simpler than that. We love our jobs, and we want more people to fancy doing them too.
So rather than shadowing meetings or making tea, we gave our new team a real brief: plan, design, and build a working digital product, then pitch it to our leadership team on Friday.
Spoiler alert: they absolutely delivered.
The challenge: turning an idea into a working prototype
We split the students into two teams, each with a genuine product challenge drawn from problems we actually have. One team set out to build a car-sharing app for colleagues travelling to the office. The other tackled something every workplace will recognise: social event ideas getting lost in Slack. Their answer was a team events app with RSVPs, an event calendar with directions built in, an idea suggestion box, and even a budget tracker that tells you when (and by how much) you've overspent.
Monday started with an introduction to AI prompting: how to give an AI tool clear instructions, how to refine its output, and, most importantly, how to question what it produces.
For most of the students this was the first time they'd used these tools on a real project, since AI use is limited in school.
Seeing them go from tentative first prompts on Monday to confidently building with AI by Friday was one of our highlights of the week.
From there, the week looked a lot like life in a digital agency:
- Sketching ideas on paper before moving into wireframes and planning documents.
- Building app prototypes using an AI-powered development tool and working through the security warnings it identified.
- Turning their ideas into presentation decks using our own brand guidelines.
- Taking part in daily team check-ins, just as they would in a real client stand-up.
What we noticed (and loved)
As the marketing person sitting in on several of those check-ins, I had a front-row seat to some lovely moments through the week.
There were lovely small moments: one team's paper wireframes needed to make it into their slides, but they were all on Android devices and working on Macs. So I photographed the sketches and AirDropped them across, and they took it from there, cropping and formatting them into their deck. A student experimented with our brand guidelines, then carefully applied them once we'd walked through how they work. And both teams divided up responsibilities and made sure everyone was properly included.
It wasn't all plain sailing. Around the middle of the week, energy dipped a little, not helped by a July heatwave that turned our upstairs project room into something of a greenhouse, and a couple of our team had to channel their inner teachers to get everyone back on track. But that's part of the experience. A real workplace comes with real expectations (and occasionally unreasonable weather), and the students responded brilliantly. By Thursday, both teams were fully focused, polishing their apps and presentations, and clearly proud of what they'd achieved.
The final presentations
On Friday afternoon, both teams presented their work to our leadership team. The presentations were excellent, featuring working prototypes, planning documents, and thoughtful reflections on what they'd learnt and what they'd do if they had more time.
The feedback afterwards made our week. The students told us how much they'd enjoyed the experience and thanked the whole team for the time and effort we'd put into it.
One parent wrote to say their child had learnt so much, loved getting to know the other students, and came home with a real confidence boost. One student even left us a box of chocolates, which promptly melted in the July heat, but the thought definitely counted.
Our homework for next year
Because we treated work experience like a real project, we did what we'd do after any project and brought the team together for a retrospective. These are our takeaways for next year's work experience week:
- Structure is everything. School life is built around hour-long lessons, so a full day working from an open brief is something most students simply aren't used to. Once we switched to hourly check-ins, asking "What have you done?" and "What's your plan for the next hour?", alongside a simple, clearly written list of deliverables, the difference was remarkable. Next year, we'll build that rhythm in from day one, with morning and end-of-day stand-ups.
- Hold back the AI (just a little). Giving students an AI build tool on Monday afternoon changes the way they approach the task. Once they've seen how quickly AI can generate something, it's much harder to persuade them to slow down and sketch ideas on paper first. Next year, we'll start with whiteboards, sketches and problem-solving before introducing AI tools later in the week. This is how we'd recommend anyone use AI: think first, then use AI to help develop and refine your ideas.
- Smaller teams, more mixing. Next time we'll work in pairs rather than groups of three, mix the teams up during the week, and start with a proper icebreaker on Monday morning to give everyone a chance to get to know each other before the work begins.
- Set expectations early. Something as simple as a code of conduct pinned up on day one, respect for teammates, the workspace, the schedule, makes the whole week run more smoothly.
Why we do this
Learning is one of our core values, and it works both ways. The students learnt about AI, product thinking, teamwork and presenting. We learnt just as much about mentoring, how the next generation approaches technology, and the amount of creativity sitting in local classrooms waiting for the opportunity to shine.
Offering work experience is one way we can give something back to the community that supports us. These students are future developers, designers, marketers and business owners, and perhaps one day they'll be future colleagues or clients too. A week like this might be a small investment, but its impact can last for years.
There's also a lot of noise right now about AI coming for software jobs. What we actually see, day to day, is the opposite. AI is taking on the boring and repetitive parts of work, and the roles are getting more interesting, not disappearing. If six teenagers left here seeing a career worth having rather than one about to vanish, that's a good week's work.
A huge thank you to everyone on the team who planned, mentored and helped make the week such a success, and especially to Katie, whose months of planning made it all possible.
Could your school or student be next?
We're already planning next year's placement, taking everything we've learned this year and building on it. If you're a local school, or a student interested in experiencing life at a digital agency, we'd love to hear from you. And if you're a girl thinking about a career in technology, we'd especially encourage you to apply.
You can get in touch with us via versantus.co.uk