Helping businesses explore opportunities and create jobs through consultancy collaborations

Classroom Secrets are a well-respected company providing classroom teaching resources and support to schools across the UK. Bev Ridyard, the Interim Managing Director from Classroom Secrets has always had a passion for supporting the next generation of students to gain work ready skills to help them secure roles in the future. And she was keen to make the project as business focused as possible through posing a question to the students that would have a real business impact. Bev was supported by her colleague Bec Mitchell, Marketing Campaign and Project Manager, in the delivery of the consultancy project who had regular meetings with the students, guiding them and answering questions at each stage.

I really loved to see this project develop and deliver successes and impact to both the students and the business. One of our students working on this project – Charlie Bewick – has now been recruited at Classroom Secrets in a full-time role in their marketing team – so I was keen to speak to both Bec and Charlie to find out more about their experience of the consultancy project.

As with all pilot projects we learnt a lot and are already implementing some of the feedback from the business and students who took part.

Interview with Bec Mitchell, Marketing Campaign and Project Manager at Classroom Secrets

What are your overall thoughts on the student project?

I thought it was a really interesting collaboration. I saw the three students grow as individuals through the process – taking on more responsibility and taking action proactively. It was invaluable to us for the students to help us solve a real-life business problem that we didn’t have capacity for. During the project they were a great extension of the Marketing team!

What did the project focus on?

The project focused on building our customer personas. Personas are fictitious characters created to mimic a real customer; they are generally based on user research and incorporate the needs, goals, and observed behaviour patterns of a company’s target audience. Personas start with basic profiles and then the emotional and behavioural components are added using qualitative and quantitative data that is collected from actual users.

For us at Classroom Secrets, knowing our user personas can help us relate to our customers as real people as they help to paint an accurate picture of precisely what that person would want from our service.

What elements of the project did you find most useful?

The project took an iterative form, with each element completing a building block to establishing the final consolidated personas so it’s hard to pick out one part! Of course, the final personas are one of the most useful parts, but I think ultimately, it’s knowing that the personas are built on hundreds of survey (a survey run by the students) responses collected from our community.

What impacts has the project had on your business?

The personas have been helpful for us to understand our audience. They’ve provided us a real data-driven understanding of who our community are so we can truly address their unique needs to drive sales and retain customers. The personas have also been used to develop the user experience on our website.

What recommendations would you give to the project team at Leeds Beckett to improve the project?

Trust your knowledge and experience developed as part of your degree to really run with the project and own it!  As with most things in life, you only get out what you put in.

Based on feedback from the students I’d say:

1. Establish regular check ins between the students and a member of your staff. This allows a rapport to be built between the students and your company as well as an opportunity for the students to ask any questions and your organisation to check that what is being worked on is going in the right direction!

2. Create a step-by-step project plan. This gives the students confidence to know the purpose of the project and feel supported.

3. Foster open communication – your organisation will learn from the students as much as they’ll learn from you!

Interview with Charlie Bewick, Graduate Sales and Marketing Executive at Classroom Secrets

What are your overall thoughts on the project you were working on?

The personas project was really enjoyable for all of us as it gave us the chance to work in a small team, very much like what someone will experience when they go into full-time employment. But above all, the skills that we gained from interacting with employees, and sometimes even presenting our findings to the Directors, were a huge boost for us all!

At University, we would often be given fictional case studies so it was a really nice change to be able to get an insight into a real-life organisation and the issues one might face. We were initially told what the final end goal of the project would be, but I really liked how the entire project was broken down each week into separate blocks so that we could see the clear progression towards the final end-goal of creating the customer personas.

What elements of the project did you find most useful?

Each block included a different type of task and by the end of the project we had completed a wide range of different tasks such as: data collection, data analysis, market research, employee interviews, customer surveys etc, which really gave us exposure to some responsibilities we’d never really been given before!

Moreover, whilst we were completing the project with Classroom Secrets, they were brilliant in acknowledging that we also had a report to write for University, so they made sure that the entire project was designed in a way that allowed us to complete both effectively.

What impact has the project had on you and your skills, knowledge and experience?

Each week we were given a different task to do, so we would go away to work on this and present our findings back via a Powerpoint presentation on Microsoft Teams the following week. Doing these presentations definitely brought us out of our comfort zone and was daunting at first, but it got a lot easier, and we improved massively each week.

Now, this is something I do regularly in my full-time role at Classroom Secrets, as well as data collection, data analysis and many more things we did during the project - which shows that the tasks we were given were realistic for a role in marketing. Additionally, the project definitely gave me valuable experience in dealing with various employees within the organisation, which made the transition to full-time employment a lot easier.

What recommendations would you give to the project team to improve the project?

I wouldn’t change many things at all. Just make sure to keep regular contact to ensure that the project is heading in the right direction at all times!

What advice would you give to other students?

My advice would be to make sure that you take the project as seriously as you possibly can. The more effort you put into helping out the organisation with the project, the more accommodating they will be in making sure the project can cater to the needs of your University report too! Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, working on the personas project has led to me gaining a full-time Graduate role with Classroom Secrets which just shows that taking part in these projects may present fantastic opportunities for you after your studies have finished.

Join our business community

Are you a business with a question that could be answered through a piece of consultancy, that could support your businesses? Let us know.  Our consultancy projects start again in October and we are always looking for good real life projects for our students to work on.

Contact Natalie Allen, Head of Business Partnerships, by email or on 0113 812 2024.