By Lauren W and Chris V, Careers Reps

It was fantastic to see so many parent volunteers come in last week to share their top careers tools and tips with our Year 12s as part of our Parents’ Guild Career Skills Workshop.

Students enjoyed taking part in speed interviewing together with interactive sessions on CV writing and networking. Big thanks to all our parental volunteers plus Parents’ Guild Careers’ Committee Co-Chairs Rishi Patel and Danny Vroegop for organising, Lucie Shaw, Kanchan Agarwal and Danny for leading the CV writing workshops and Simon King-Cline, Sameer Mistry and Danny for running the networking workshops.

In the networking session, we learned and practised how to write letters asking for work experience, and built our own network of people we knew. The expert advice from the parents running the workshop developed our confidence, giving us 8 clear steps to follow when reaching out in search of opportunities. Seeing the variety of professions we have personal connections to, with was an additional helping hand, gave us many options of people to reach out to.

The CV workshop was a very insightful and detailed breakdown of what employers are generally looking for. As well as the more administrative content, like ensuring we’ve included our contact details, we were advised about what qualifications, skills, and interests we should highlight. The overall message was to speak positively (and honestly, of course!), and most importantly: make your GCSE English teacher proud! Oh, I mean: take extra care with your spelling, punctuation, and grammar!

The general favourite (albeit somewhat nerve-wracking, at least at the beginning) activity of the day was the speed-interviewing session in which we students sat down as pairs or small groups with one of the parents. We were asked a range of questions: some abstract like our views on AI and climate change, and some more fundamental like our strengths and weaknesses, all of which aimed to prepare us for future interviews. The feedback we garnered from the parents and from each other boosted our confidence and helped us refine our skills. By the end, I’m sure we all felt like lean, mean, interview-and-work-experience-prepared machines!

Thank you again to the Parents’ Guild and volunteers for such an enjoyable and useful afternoon.