Spring Careers Update

There was a flurry of career events taking place in the Spring Term. Here is a roundup of these below:

Careers Convention

On the evening of Thursday 17 March we had our first Careers Convention since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. The Sports Hall was packed with pupils and parents visiting the exhibition of over 40 companies, Higher Education and gap year providers. It was great to see some OCs back too – Toby Swindells (2017, Carter Jonas) and Martin Kidd (1973, Vokins Chartered Surveyors).

In tandem, we had a fantastic mini-lecture programme running in the new Music Auditorium with talks from Deloitte, E&Y, BAE Systems, Raleigh International and The London Interdisciplinary School and also on subjects including a career in nursing and Software Engineering and Solution Architecture in Finance.

It was wonderful to see our largest careers and Higher Education event back; thank you so much to all the amazing exhibitors and speakers for making it happen.

Lower Sixth Networking

The new Music Auditorium was the perfect venue for a wonderful evening of networking in March. Over 70 volunteer networkers put our Lower Sixth students through their paces whilst they practised their networking skills over drinks and canapés. Advice, anecdotes and experience were shared and, after a slightly nervous start, the students soon found their networking feet and obviously thoroughly enjoyed meeting such an interesting and supportive group of parent-volunteers.

Thank you to all our brilliant volunteers for putting everyone at ease and well done to the Lower Sixth for throwing themselves into the occasion.

Career Bites

Each term we have a series of careers talks called ‘Career Bites’. These aim to introduce students to a wide range of careers, roles and sectors in an informal and accessible way. We have been incredibly lucky this term to have some wonderful speakers delivering these sessions. Open to all year groups and parents these talks are very popular and there is always a lively Q&A at the end.

Thank you to all our speakers this term for opening the eyes of both pupils and parents and broadening our horizons. The majority of the talks are hosted on Teams which also means they are recorded and available in perpetuity on Firefly. This term our talks have included: ‘Music Careers’ with Ash Howes, ‘Allied Health Professions: a career as a dietitian’ with Claudia Hoskins-Heinemann, ‘The World of Brand Design Agencies’ with Jim Burton, ‘Why Digital? A career choice or an inevitability?’ with OC Chris Parker and ‘Careers in the Green/Environmental Sector and Finance’ with James Bowling.