I was approached by a young person this week who wants to forge a career in marketing with no work experience or a portfolio, volunteering to do some marketing for us for free to get what she needs in order to make herself more attractive to employers.

I did this myself back in the day and I've forged a decent career out of it, so I want to make sure that whatever this person ends up doing for us, it's a genuinely valuable experience for them that really helps them get ahead.

For those of you who have been in this position - what did the places you volunteered at do to make it a valuable experience? If it wasn't valuable - what could they have done differently?

My first thoughts are to give herself something interesting, engaging, and in line with the kind of marketing work they want to do. I don't want to take advantage and give them the crappy admin jobs when they really want to work in social, seo etc.

I want to find something they'll enjoy doing and that gives them a tangible outcome where they can go to potential employers and point to a specific website or social campaign and say "Hey, I did that."

I also want to be sure that I write a detailed reference/testimonial that they can put in her portfolio and, of course, make myself available if they need a referee for a job.

Lastly, I'm thinking that, yes, if things work out and they do a good job, it's a good way of getting somebody on board so that I can outsource paid work to as and when the need arises.

Is there anything else I could/should be doing?

For background, I run a super small content marketing/seo company mainly producing long-form blogs and other content for third-party clients, but also building up a small portfolio of our own revenue-generating, content-based sites.