Queensland creative agency BCM has once again picked a handful of Lucky graduates from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to participate in its annual Baptism internship program.

A formal recruitment and selection process screened applicants from QUT’s advertising, marketing and PR courses within its business school, as well as students studying relevant courses through the uni’s creative industries faculty.

The calibre of this year’s crop were so high that rather than accepting six graduates to complete its internship program as per usual, BCM chose seven, which joined the agency’s creative, digital, account service, media, brand strategy, social media, and content teams today.

Now in its fifth cycle, BCM’s Baptism internship program, run in collaboration with QUT, allows graduates to spend a summer in the agency learning the ropes from a senior BCM mentor.

More than just passive, filing, coffee-fetching and observing roles, the interns are able to fully immerse themselves in BCM through collaborating with their mentors and teams, presenting to clients and putting their skills into practice on real client projects with real outcomes.

The program has proven a win-win for BCM and the Baptees alike. From last year’s crop of talented Baptees, three went on to secure full-time roles in the agency – working in Creative Content, Media/Programmatic and Account Service teams.

Some participants of the Baptism internship have gone on to secure roles with leading agencies such as Ogilvy Sydney. One of the graduates from BCM’s inaugural program in 2012-13 went on to work for Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, and is now working as a writer for Apple in San Francisco.

BCM managing director Paul Cornwell said the agency is “absolutely thrilled” with the success of Baptism.

“It continues to go from strength to strength, [and] it truly gives our interns a taste of the real life inside an agency,” he said.