University

01 Jul 09

Laura Carter and Marzyeh Ghassemi, members of the OSC team that worked on Oxfam’s project, with David McCullough, Julian Fifield and Lorraine Weedham Brunley from Oxfam.

An idea from two students has led to the start of the Oxford Student Consultancy (OSC) – a new project that sees students offering free consultancy services to local organisations.

The OSC, run by the University’s Careers Service, completed its pilot last term and projects ranged from marketing and promotion, to website design, audience analysis and fundraising, for groups including the Pegasus Theatre, Oxfam and Modern Art Oxford.

Joerg Metzner and Michael Strahlman, two finalists at Balliol College, approached the Careers Service with the idea for a student consultancy after Joerg had seen a similar, but commercial, project in Germany.

The students and the Careers Service believed the idea presented a good opportunity to provide students with practical training in key skills such as team working, communication and customer awareness, while at the same time offering local organisations the chance to get fresh ideas and an outside perspective.

Jonathan Black, Director of the Careers Service, said the fact the idea came from students has helped it work: ‘We can be arrogant and presume we know what students want but the students really know what they want… I think what we can add is giving students the opportunity to learn through real work-based experiences.

‘A lot of the students who took part don’t want to become consultants but many people were attracted to the project because it was explicitly third sector.’

Over 70 students from many different subjects, colleges and courses applied to take part in the pilot project and the final 28 were selected after an assessment centre at the Careers Service.

The student consultants were divided into teams of four and took part in training, both with the Careers Service and industry specialists, before contacting local organisations. IBM and Oliver Wyman ran sessions on procuring projects, proposal letters, hypothesis building, conducting interviews and analysis, while the students also received training in presentation skills and an introduction to finance.
The student teams had a mentor to provide advice and offer direction to the project where needed.

Julian Fifield, project manager at Oxfam, said they started working with the student consultants because they had a problem. ‘We’ve got a business challenge we’re looking at right now and it was a real opportunity to get some help on it - simple as that.'

Julian emphasised that the students were working on a genuine, live project that had to be completed to a very tight timescale. Oxfam asked the students to look at how they can best use a house-to-house collection bag to gather donations to be sold in their shops – looking at the most efficient and effective ways to distribute bags and collect items from residents of different areas.

Julian said he liked the fact that the students offered a fresh approach and he thought their final report was very good. ‘It was a very practical report as well as being very innovative. We’re going to look through the whole lot and we’re hoping we can make use of all of it.'

Two of the students who worked on the team looking at Oxfam’s house-to-house collection scheme were Laura Carter, who is studying Law with Law Studies in Europe, and Marzyeh Ghassemi, a Biomedical Engineering DPhil student.
Laura says she has learnt a range of practical skills, from giving presentations and conducting street interviews to basic financial management.

Marzeyeh said she enjoyed meeting the other students: ‘Working in a team with people I would normally never have met and really coalescing as a team was good. We would get out of meetings saying ‘that was a good meeting’ – and you never normally have that.'

‘I feel like we really made an impact,’ she adds. ‘It’s an ongoing project addressing a strategic concern that a huge company has and we’re trying to help them with it. We’re looking at their issue, the same thing their people are looking at, from our perspective. I felt like we made an impact, we made a contribution, and that’s a great feeling.'

This term was the pilot for the Oxford Student Consultancy and the Careers Service is planning to continue the project next year.