Company details

London, UK

HEADCOUNT

10000+

ORG TYPE

Corporate

SECTOR

Professional Services

WEBSITE

https://www.wpp.com/en

About the company

WPP is a global marketing services group that runs creative, media, PR, production, and marketing technology work through a large portfolio of agency brands. WPP serves large advertisers and organisations, including hundreds of Fortune 500 companies, with services spanning brand strategy, media investment, content production, and data and AI-enabled marketing operations. WPP also develops and deploys shared technology platforms across the network, including WPP Open, which the company positions as an AI-powered marketing operating system.

Locations and presence

WPP operates across roughly 100 countries with a workforce described as 100,000-plus people. WPP has moved to a stricter office-based model, with reporting that most employees are expected to be in the office four days per week from April 2025, which shapes how “hybrid” feels for early-career hires.

Palpable Score

67.2

/ 100

WPP is accessible for early-career candidates who can navigate a network-style employer, because WPP runs visible paid entry pathways like the Creative Tech Apprenticeship and also places interns across agency brands. The score is held back by uneven transparency and outcomes: candidate experience and pay signals vary heavily by agency and location, and WPP does not publish cohort outcomes like conversion and promotion rates.

Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

14.8

/ 20

The company runs the Creative Tech Apprenticeship, a nine-month paid programme in London that states no degree or prior tech experience is required and recruits a defined cohort size.

WPP has run the WelcomeTalent mentorship programme, placing students into internships at WPP agencies with a personal mentor plus training days focused on professional skills.

The company routes most entry-level access through agency-by-agency hiring via the WPP Career Explorer and network job boards, which creates opportunities but makes “one front door” early-career hiring harder to see.

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Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

13.0

/ 20

The company has a broadly consistent multi-stage interview pattern visible in aggregated candidate reports, including recruiter screens, one-on-one interviews, skills tests, and presentations.

WPP’s intern interview reports include straightforward early-stage screens in some locations, but also aptitude tests and longer timelines in other locations, pointing to variability in assessment burden.

The company does not publish a single, standard early-career hiring process with stages and timelines across WPP’s agency network, so applicants often rely on recruiter guidance and third-party reports.

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Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

15.0

/ 20

The company publishes network-wide learning infrastructure, including Future Readiness Academies with modules on AI, Commerce, MarTech, Sustainability and shorter courses like Agile Thinking.

WPP reports large-scale upskilling activity, including more than 21,000 partner accreditations and certifications earned in 2024 from major technology partners.

The company’s early-career pathways described publicly include structured training and real-project exposure, such as the Creative Tech Apprenticeship curriculum and the WelcomeTalent mentor-led internships.

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Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

11.8

/ 20

The company frames key early-career routes as paid, including the Creative Tech Apprenticeship and internship placements described in WelcomeTalent.

WPP has limited consistent pay-range transparency across regions and job families on the public-facing WPP careers pages reviewed, which makes it harder for graduates to benchmark offers early.

The company provides globally positioned support like an Employee Assistance Programme, but public employee feedback also includes recurring concerns about low wages and heavy overtime in parts of the network.

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Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

12.5

/ 20

The company reports that after two years of the Creative Tech Apprenticeship, the majority of apprentices received job offers from WPP’s production arm Hogarth, which is a concrete conversion signal.

WPP has mixed workforce sentiment in public review summaries, including mid-range overall ratings and a split business outlook that suggests uneven team experiences and stability perceptions.

The company has public early-career positives like “access to loads of courses” and “good to start your career” alongside negatives like “a lot of overtime” and “constant changes in management,” and WPP does not publish early-career retention or time-to-promotion data to clarify what progression typically looks like.

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Useful links & resources

WPP Careers (Career Explorer and open roles)Creative Tech Apprenticeship programme (WPP news release)Skills, learning and development at WPP (network-wide programmes)