A successful work placement programme which helped people find a job in digital media has been given a grant to expand.

The Brighton Internship Scheme, which is run by the University of Sussex and Wired Sussex, was a pilot project last year, which found work for 25 interns within 21 different companies, 40% of whom went on to be employed full time.

Now it has received £600,000 to extend the programme so that more than 100 placements will be on offer this year. The scheme is targeted at digital media businesses within Sussex.

Phil Jones, managing director of Wired Sussex, said: “The pilot showed we could organise an internship programme specifically for small companies who may not have a human resources department or the resources to handle internships. Getting the grant was gratifying.”

Companies taking part give a description of the kind of skills they are looking for to Wired Sussex, which matches them with potential candidates.

Nigel Cooper, operations director at social media agency Qube, which took part in the pilot programme, said: “We started off only planning to take one intern on but the three people we interviewed were of such high quality we took two of them on.” The interns came in for two and a half days a week for three months and underwent an in-house training programme.

Both ended up being employed full time.

Mr Cooper said: “We were not hopeful because recruitment is very difficult and time consuming.

But we were impressed with the way our criteria was matched with quality candidates.”

Visit www.wiredsussex.com for more information.