In late June, a student, who we are calling Arthur, found a job advertised on UCL Careers Jobs platform and began an internship at WES Group, a marketing firm whose main client is a fintech platform.
Arthur claims he undertook approximately a month of unpaid work on the mutual understanding that, following this period, he would be offered a paid arrangement at an agreed hourly rate for his work.
However, The Cheese Grater understands by mid August, UCL Careers had to remove WES Group from their same platform and wrote to the company twice alleging it had undermined the trust between the student, university and recruiter.
Arthur claims the company disputed almost every element of his account, and revised its justification more than once over the course of an email exchange with UCL Careers.
More than two weeks after the dispute began, the student told UCL Careers that the matter was not worth pursuing anymore due to what he saw as a lack of accountability.
The original agreement
According to Arthur, his offer letter set out a one-month unpaid ‘assessment period’ subject to satisfactory performance and a separate written confirmation, he would be offered a paid arrangement based on an hourly rate.
He had never disputed that the initial month was unpaid. Both Arthur and WES Group agreed on that much.
However when the assessment period ended late July, Arthur says that in a private meeting his supervisor and a senior team member told him he had not met a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), typically a target used to measure staff performance, and was therefore ‘not qualified to be paid.’
Arthur claims this KPI condition was not part of the original agreement and was introduced later without any discussion with him. There is no official documentation of this meeting and The Cheese Grater cannot verify this claim.
Conflicting accounts
Once it became clear to Arthur that WES Group had no intention of paying him, despite continuing to work after his assessment period, he raised his concerns with UCL Careers.
Upon initial reply, WES Group claimed that it “does not apply any KPI threshold to determine whether an intern is paid, progresses to a formal position or remains with the Company.”
The only KPI Arthur encountered, “related to a separate, discretionary bonus” was allegedly for a specific client project and had nothing to do with his agreed pay at all.
The claim got immediate pushback from UCL Careers; if this was the case, why was the student told that he hadn’t met a KPI in the first place.
WES Group's second explanation brought a different view of the meeting. The company said the “not qualified to be paid” comment referred only to a £100 discretionary bonus for a client project Arthur worked on, which he technically had not met the target for. Arthur was told his supervisor had secured it for him as an exception, “in recognition of his effort.”
Unrelated to that bonus, the company said its internal review had concluded it would not be progressing Arthur to a paid hourly internship at all. This decision was based on “his overall performance and the company's business needs,” which had nothing to do with any KPI.
The two claims made by WES Group appear to have no correlation.
On one hand there is the discretionary bonus, and on the other, a separate decision not to extend allegedly promised remuneration. Both claims happened to be raised in the same conversation with UCL Careers.
Lack of documentation
Arthur rejected WES Group’s account claiming it to be “simply a lie.”
He said the figure told to him and his colleagues led them to expect a $200 USTD project bonus (paid through cryptocurrency). Arthur says he was told he would receive this bonus because he was “the best performing trainee”.
He claimed this was subsequently reduced to $100 because the team had not hit the target and “none of them had performed very well”. The final sum came to around £70.
He also disputes WES Group’s claim that he was not doing substantive work after the first month, saying he was in the office and continued building out the company’s influencer database before filing a complaint with UCL Careers.
The agreed hourly rate and notes from the meeting between Arthur and the WES Group employees were not documented, which is why UCL Careers was left mediating the dispute.
The Cheese Grater was given access to the email exchange between Arthur, UCL Careers and WES Group.
UCL Careers raised concerns that there were discrepancies between the two accounts and a lack of written communication did not resolve them.
UCL Careers asked WES Group: If the KPI was entirely unrelated to payment or progression, why was Arthur told during a discussion specifically concerning his remuneration that he had not met a KPI and was therefore “not qualified to be paid”?
However, WES Group claimed UCL Careers was conflating both points, the discretionary bonus and the question of hourly payment.
Community-specific recruitment
Another concern raised by UCL Careers during the email exchange was that WES Group may have benefited from the trust students place in employers connected to their community.
WES Group is a Chinese company recruiting Mandarin-speaking students, Arthur being one of them.
The Cheese Grater cannot verify any allegations or claims that WES Group benefited from any form of cultural trust.
A UCL Careers employee highlighted to WES Group that students often rely on nationality, language and university links when deciding whether an employer is trustworthy.
The employee further expressed disappointment that Arthur was left unsure if he would be paid for the work that had already been completed.
Arthur expressed to UCL Careers that the shared language, cultural ties and UCL connections within the company gave him a sense of trust and confidence which was broken as a result of the dispute.
WES Group rejected this claim stating Arthur’s ethnicity, language or connection to the Chinese student community had nothing to do with his recruitment. They further raised that Arthur had found the opportunity independently through the UCL Careers platform.
While this concern was raised, neither UCL Careers nor Arthur suggested that WES Group deliberately recruited him through the UCL Alumni network or used his ethnicity as a recruitment tool.
The bigger picture
WES Group was removed from the platform after the complaint was raised and UCL Careers informed the University of London of its concerns.
The team promptly identified the inconsistencies in WES Group’s emails and did not fail to question their lack of accountability.
This article concerns only one internship that went sour. It does not claim that internships found on the UCL Careers platform are illegitimate.
The Cheese Grater contacted WES Group with detailed questions about the student's allegations and UCL Careers' concerns. WES Group did not respond before publication.
A UCL Spokesperson said: “Our jobs board promotes a wide range of jobs and internships to students. The majority of these are posted directly by employers, who have been approved by us with due diligence checks run by our team.
“While we are unable to comment on any individual cases, the vast majority of our students’ internships prove mutually beneficial and in the very rare instance this doesn’t happen we do our utmost to support our students and resolve any differences."
This article was featured in CG99.