Young talent can bring new ideas to small firms, says founder of Paperound

Mr Fox set up Paperound after finding it difficult to connect with small firms when it came to securing experience as a student.

He told The Yorkshire Post: “There’s basically a wall between students and industry. Not everybody has access.

“Universities do the best they can to organise things like placements and there are things like graduate schemes but they’re more corporate focused.

“If you’re interested in start-ups and SMEs, getting yourself out there as a student is quite hard.”

Paperound aims to help students build up relevant experience. All the work is digital and done remotely.

Mr Fox said: “Building relevant experience is quite hard. For a lot of students there’s unpaid internships, they just don’t get the opportunity to work.

“I did a whole summer pretty much unpaid just to build my experience. I was thinking it’s not very good.”

The 27-year-old, who previously worked in management consultancy, believes small firms can benefit from outsourcing projects to students as well.

“In the UK student population, there are plenty of talented individuals that have relevant skills for businesses,” he says.

Mr Fox added that entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate and it can be hard for them to delegate if they only have a small team.

“Senior freelancers can have quite expensive day rates but sometimes you just need the extra pair of hands,” he said.

That’s where students can come in and take on projects, helping alleviate some of the pressure.

Mr Fox said: “In terms of what students bring to a business, there are a few things that we’ve observed. A lot of it is different ways of working. The tools they use. A lot of businesses won’t necessarily be aware of what tools they could use to get output.

“The other thing is the application of learning quickly. One of the best interviews I ran with one of my students was when I asked him about skills and he said ‘well I can do all of this but the other thing is if you ask me to do anything else it is just one YouTube tutorial away’.

“Younger generations view a challenge as not necessarily having to relearn everything because they are just much more open to learning something new.”

The platform allows students to list themselves and set a price for their work so long as it’s above the minimum wage.

“Students set their own price but they can’t go below the national living wage,” Mr Fox says. “It’s not a race to the bottom here.” This also enables students to start thinking about what their work is worth, helping those who may be considering careers as freelancers in particular.

There are two types of work that have been in demand so far on the platform. One is creative output such as graphic design, digital content creation and web design. The other is more analytical such as building sets of data and creating reports.

Mr Fox says that while graduate unemployment is low, there are still question marks over how many of them are in skilled graduate work.

The platform will enable young people to improve their career prospects by showing the potential they have got to businesses, he added.

Paperound teams up with council

Paperound has teamed up with Leeds City Council to help SMEs access the platform in the city region.

The council is subsidising access to the platform for innovative start-ups that have high-growth potential.

Jake Fox said: “We run them through a set of criteria and then give them a unique access code to access a student tasker for ten hours. That’s fully subsidised by the council.

“It’s funded by the council but run by us. What it means is that you’ve got these click to activate student taskers for Leeds businesses from Leeds-based universities so we’re matching up local students with local businesses for digital projects.”

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James Mitchinson