The Underpin explored a ‘work intro’ programme for junior candidates who were ready to step up into a career at one of the world’s leading animation and VFX Studios.
In Nigeria and the rest of Africa, businesses with growth potentials are hampered by the poor access to quality talents. Thus the curiosity, thoughts of how to create more jobs in Nigeria.
Inpired by the book, "Benjamin Franklin", a biography by Walter Isaacson. There was a passage that reads “The riches of a country are to be valued by the quantity of labor its inhabitants are able to purchase, and not by the quantity of silver and gold they possess.”
After pitching to Doug from Pixar Animation and ace Hollywood recruiter, Rachael, a friend reffered me to Emeka who later joined the team and offered a space for the training which started on the 27th, February 2017. We recruited and trained 2 graduates from a pool of 100 applicants.
In the process of the application, we started drafting a model to onboard the most passionate talents to the program. Skill in animation or VFX was not important at this point. It was more important to get the most aspirational talents who were hungry to learn the bolts and nuts of this industry.
We drafted this home study curriculum that was reviewed by more than 30 professionals in the industry. We enrolled the top 3% and two of them were able to conclude the trianing. It was planned as two weeks training but it was exteded to 4 weeks based on the output we got from the trainees.
