Oxford is one of the world’s most revered universities, with world-leading schools in economics and social enterprise.
The challenge
Oxford Career Services wanted students to make informed career decisions, especially given that large companies invest heavily in recruiting Oxford grads. We were invited to design a weekend programme that:
- Gave students a realistic sense of being an entrepreneurs
- Gave students skills that were both useful as entrepreneurs, and on the job market
##Design & Delivery
We designed a programme to be delivered by Source-selected entrepreneurs. It emulated much of the strife of being an entrepreneur while layering on key skills in early-stage technology entrepreneurship. The workshops oscillated from story-telling to application, with teams of students progressing with their business idea. We’ve run this programme every semester for over 2 years.
Results
Immersion achieved 3 important outcomes:
- It’s exciting and engaging to students, and with little promotion is well-attending, even during busy times of year.
- Roughly 10% of attendees actually launch the business they started in Immersion. Others go on to found new companies and still more use their skills to get jobs in startups.
- Most importantly, students leave the weekend feeling they’re now in a position to decide for themselves with an important choice: do I go down the startup path?