Google offers graduates placements - graduate jobs

Many of the biggest advertising agencies have been invited to send graduate staff to work with Google for two to three months in a bid to deepen its relationship with advertisers, the Evening Standard reports.

The project, entitled Square, is aimed at provided free placements offering e-skills programmes and brainstorming sessions, according to the paper.

But although Google is paying the costs, it did not say whether it would fund agencies' staff wages for the placement periods.

The project, an initiative from the UK end of the operation, will be piloted in March 2012 with the aim of graduates being able to take their new "e-skills" back to their agencies. They will apparently work in an undisclosed site rather than one of Google's main London offices.

Google has nine-tenths of the UK's internet search market and its initiative to build on that is supported by development agency Hyper Island and trade body the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Copyright Press Association 2011