Last year we could not send our Year 10 groups into the real world of work (we all know why) and this year local companies were not yet ready to accept students back for traditional work experience. Instead we ran an internal Professional Development Day which proved to be a great success (so said our Year 10 delegates last time) so we decided to run it again this year.
Our Year 10 students started the day in workshops where they wrote their CVs and personal statements. The idea was that they chose a fantasy or dream job that they will be interviewed for in the afternoon. They had a workshop on Networking Skills and Relationship Building called How to Win Friends and Influence People with an expert guest speaker, Will Kintish, on video who generously recorded a session for us. They had further workshops on Career Changes and Working Abroad. There was also a fascinating session of Life Lessons from David from our Riding School whose previous career was in the Police and had to deal with a variety of challenging situations. The final one was a workplace role-play exploring tricky situations in the world of work ad how rot deal with them. Then, in the afternoon everyone rotated around three sessions: a team building task on the top terrace, a CV check-in workshop and a real (pretend) job interview.
It was this job interview that was the most revealing and rewarding for all involved. Here was a moment that individuals used the training we’d given them and the skills they’d learnt to really sell themselves well. For some of our students it was one of their finest moments, how well they articulated their passions, hopes and dreams as well as discussing their previous relevant experiences. We even threw in a few tricky cliché interview questions to catch them out but they all handled it wonderfully.
The training isn’t over yet though. In the last week of term we’ll have a few more sessions on Philosophy and Moral Dilemmas as well as a whole day on Entrepreneurship.
Ayd Instone, Head of Curriculum Enrichment and Communications