By Natasha B, Year 10 Journalist Leader

On the 12th June, Year 10, after a long period of exams, started enrichment week with an engaging workshop called “Business Brains” run by Bright Futures Experience. Having taken part in a similar workshop two years ago, our year group was excited to see what was in store for us this time and it did not disappoint. When learning about entrepreneurship, interviews, branding, it could have been easy to slip into a monotonous lecture about what to do and not to do, but instead we were given a range of fun and crazy business activities to take part in. 

At the start of the day, we were split into groups and given our first activity which involved learning about job interviews. In this task we were given 5 job CVs and it was up to us to decide who should get the job. However, we soon learned that the best CVs don’t include long essays about your school and work experience but short sections with relevant keywords and phrases, focused on the job requirements. As well as this, we also learned how important little details were in the format of a CV. For example one of the example CV’s had listed their education before their work experience which was not recommended and another had not specifically stated their skills to match with the requirements. This is a problem because as many CVs are read by robots which don’t consider the CV unless it has specific phrases. Therefore, when you are applying for a job, it is better to tailor your application to a few very specific jobs, rather than send it out to hundreds of them.

Next, we had to rebrand a product. We were given a product idea about a sustainable gift card made out of rubbish found in the ocean. The product hadn’t been successful so needed to be completely rebranded. In our groups, we designed a new name, logo, changed aspects of its purpose and recorded a radio advert as part of the rebranding process. This was a very fun challenge with everyone thoroughly enjoying hearing the radio adverts (these included comedic scenes, music and catchy phrases). 

Our final challenge of the day was to make as much profit as possible. We had to attempt to make stands to hold our newly branded gift cards and sell them. However, we could only make the stands out of the materials they provided us with and these materials all cost money. We were given a £5 budget and it was our group’s choice to decide how we spent it. “Should we buy the cheapest card and have a lot of it? Or should we spend it all on a more expensive card and have our products worth and sold for much more?” were some of the questions we all had to debate amongst our groups. My group decided to spend all our money on cheaper cards so we could mass produce  our products and quickly sell them then use some of this profit to make more. We found this method much quicker so that although our  products weren’t as fancy looking as the other groups, because we made many of them at a cheaper price and in a quicker time, we soon managed to overtake many and make a lot of profit. At the end of the challenge, we counted up our profits and saw who had made the most. Although there was one final catch! Our profits we had made were not actually our final profits as much of the money had to be spent on taxes, paying workers etc. With this in mind, many of the groups went into debt which everyone found very funny!

Overall, our Year 10 had a great time at the workshop and thank Bright Futures Experience massively for another fun filled yet educational day!