Some time ago – 14.1.07 – I published an entry about the need for apprenticeships for marketing and PR.

Even though I wrote that two years ago it is still a popular post.  This is of course not surprising with the current economic climate.

When Manchester Masters was launched it seemed like a promising development – apprenticeships for students and graduates wanting a career in marketing and PR.  And not only that, it was supportive and generous beyond many people’s expectation – certainly ones that had had to devote unpaid work to get on the career ladder themselves.

Why had such a scheme not been thought of before?

I was looking through The Guardian when I spotted the name of  Sandy Lindsay of Manchester PR agency Tangerine.  I was drawn into an article about selection for Manchester Masters.

Any scheme offering a real opportunity to grow (and a rent free apartment for a year) is going to be popular, in good times and bad.

But how do you select the 10 lucky students out of the 100 applications?  (This actually seems a low figure).

Well The Guardian gave the answer: Apprentice style activities such as putting a flat back together while being questioned.

These tasks were designed to weed out the “wallflowers” but as journalist Daniel Cookney observes “is it possible that the competition overlooked good candidates who were simply not suited to such a format?”  Others agreed.

It might be that the PR for this was seen as key and it was generated successfully.  After all I read about it in The Guardian.  It could be that the PR agency let its instincts take over or they took some publicity for themselves (we all do a bit from time to time).  It could be that this was seen as the best way to select, but I doubt it.

What I know is that it can be incredibly hard to get started, the recession might, I should say “will”, destroy the hopes of some graduates to attain a career in PR and marketing.

But we need to be fair as possible, perhaps this was.

The key thing is that the desperate desire to win one of these apprenticeships is taken with the upmost seriousness.  I am sure it was, but using techniques that have a touch of business reality TV gives the wrong impression.

One winner Charlotte Gush gushed, “My specialist knowledge does not lie in PR, marketing or media, but the competition challenged me to demonstrate my transferable skills, knowledge and abilities.”

How do you exactly know that if you have not worked in any of the fields?  I can’t see how the exercises did at all.

It has the ring of cliched and hackneyed CV soundbites.

For me Manchester Masters is a brilliant opportunity for 10 lucky aspiring marketers to get a real head start.  It is bound to miss talented people that make it through other means.  But it has to show that it has gone through fair and professional means to find the apprentices.  Anything less is unfair on those that missed out and on the integrity and reputation of the scheme.