60 Seconds with The Mill’s Head of Brand Partnerships Rachel Stones on replacing the grad scheme for creative & Tech industries with ‘OPEN_’

Talk us through The Mill’s involvement with OPEN_

A colleague of mine had heard Livity talking at ‘The Shiny Show’ and got in touch with them. I think we were talking for a good year before we got it all approved. Instinctively we felt like as partners Livity, Hidden and the OPEN_ scheme would help us turn the positive promises we’d made about being more inclusive as a company into something real.

What was the process like for matching talent up with The Mill?

The team at Hidden and Livity gave us great advice. We wanted to find raw talent so we constructed a set of innate characteristics that we felt were fundamental to the role but were very lose on learned skills and experience requirements as we didn’t want someone’s lack of training or exposure to impact the success of their application. The two candidates we have are amazing and have already surpassed my expectations in terms of energy, talent and ability.

What can The Mill offer to young creatives?

The talent and creative culture at The Mill is like no other. Opening any young creatives eyes to the treasures they can immerse themselves in at The Mill is one of the best parts of my job. We also have a long legacy of nurturing and developing young people who go on to become some of the best creatives in the industry. It’s incredibly important to us that we create the conditions for our teams to not only thrive but be themselves as we believe that’s when they’ll do their best work. We hope our interns will get as much from this experience as we will no doubt gain from them!

You can find more about both schemes by visiting livity.co.uk and hidden.io, following them on Instagram @livityuk and @h_ddenhq or via our People and Culture page.