As soon as September came around, anticipation began to build for the upcoming NUE Awards application deadline. For the past 10 years, ProspectSoft have either been shortlisted for or won the award for Best Small to Medium-sized Undergraduate Employer, so the pressure was on to create another incredible application this year! The NUE Awards really mean something to us here at ProspectSoft HQ…it’s not just any old award! We really put our heart and soul into our placement programme, and so take the application process for it pretty seriously! 
 
You’ll have already seen from the title of this blog that we’re once again shortlisted this year alongside four other companies. This really is testament to the commitment from everyone in the team to make the placement programme a success, year on year. From the students themselves, right through to managers, Directors, and even the board – the whole team contribute! Needless to say, this shortlist couldn’t have been achieved without the passion, commitment and determination shown by our incredible placements of 2020-21.
 
The Application 
 
Each time we come to building the application, the Marketing department have a quick “huddle” to come up with initial themes and ideas. The more suggestions, the better! We get creative, and look back at the successes from the year. 
 
It’s a ProspectSoft tradition to not submit just a written application, but build a creative video to go alongside this too to further showcase the brilliant achievements of our placements. There’s simply too much to pack into the written application that we just had to create another element to our application (making it even harder for ourselves!). Of course, we know the judges love a good stat or two, but this year, we decided to focus on the theme of how students have impacted ProspectSoft, and how ProspectSoft has impacted the students. It’s been a tricky year or so for many employers and students out there, so not only did we feel this approach was fitting, but it was a fresh take on our application – something the judges hadn’t seen us explore before!  
 
To create a video that really showed off just how incredible this cohort was, we needed to get our ideas into shape. Storyboarding not only helped organise the video into meaningful scenes, but made the video building process way easier down the line! It was also a great visual cue to come back to and check on what we’d completed so far.  
 
                                                                    
 
To begin with, the idea of pulling together an application for an award that’s so highly valued by the business was really daunting, especially considering this was something we hadn’t had much experience in! But once we knew how much time the team was willing to dedicate to the project, we were quickly put at ease! 
 
Neither of us Marketing placements had created video animations before, so this was a completely new experience. After trialling a few different software programmes, we couldn’t be swayed away from the user-friendly features of Vyond, and it’s safe to say it had a fair bit of use from us!  
 
As this was such a huge project, there were lots of intricate details to get right. Elements such as crafting the script, organising voiceovers with the placements (who’d just returned to Uni!), synching the voiceovers to characters and adding sound effects were just some of the challenges we faced along the way, but were key in order for the video to look smooth and professional.  
 
The time spent storyboarding, holding review meetings and creating the animation were all worth it when we saw the video coming to life! The final meeting where we reviewed the finished result with the Marketing team as a whole was definitely a great feeling – a project that had started life as a brainstorm of ideas turned into a fully-fledged animated 18-minute video. After several weeks perfecting and tweaking, the final video was ready and it’s safe to say it was a huge success! But don’t just take my word for it – watch it here and see for yourself! We then picked out the highlights from the video to help build our written submission. With tight word counts in place, it was crucial to stick to stats and facts, keeping it concise and engaging for the judges to read. 
 
To know that all our hard work has resulted in us placing as a finalist is a pretty great feeling and we couldn’t be prouder of the application! 
 
Before we sign off, we want to say a massive thank you to the judges for reviewing our application and giving us the incredible opportunity to be shortlisted – it really means everything…we can’t wait to attend the ceremony in March 2022!