In 2023 I was approached by the Berkshire Careers Hub who were looking to engage people from the business community to offer external support to schools and boost the impact of their careers programme. Having been fortunate enough to receive some good careers guidance back in the day, I decided it was a good way to give a little bit back and accepted the opportunity and was paired with Ranelagh school in Bracknell. Quite quickly I met Miss Bond who heads-up the careers effort in the school and with on-going support from the hub, I was able to start playing a small role in the mix. One of the first challenges I was asked to support was how to get more local companies involved with the careers fair at the school. They had some great organisations who had committed such as the RAF, Navy, Fire Brigade, O2, Virgin, Vodafone, apprenticeship providers and others. Equally, as a result of some parents taking an interest there were companies such as AWE and McLaren also due to attend. This was absolutely fantastic already I thought - what a room for other business owners to be in and around!

With that in-mind I took a look at what was going out to invite other companies to come along. Whilst it was a strong and compelling letter, as someone who is more of a visual learner, I wondered if we could create it into more of a brochure. This would help give the whole event a bit more gravitas (which is definitely deserves given the efforts of Miss Bond) and showing off the badges of honour of those organisations who had already said yes would surely stand out a mile. So the initial letter was then shortened and referred to the accompanying brochure which was fairly simple but showed clearly what would be expected, how to get involved and most importantly...why!

Fast forward a few weeks and some proactive outreach, we'd added a number of other local companies who sold IT support services, medical devices, cyber security, Digital Marketing (can I count us or is that cheating??) and more. I'd also added some input in terms of the communication with parents in the sense of giving them one thing to focus on at a time and hammering home the message and that led to a few more organisations including Microsoft also being in attendance.

So, back to this event at Green Park in Reading, we were invited along to share that experience. There were a number of brilliant people speaking on the day and offering their advice in the same way and I know it was invaluable for all the careers leads in attendance. After the talk we shared the template we've used and hopefully that helps a number of other schools too so the hard work goes even further.

If you're reading this, I'd urge you to get involved - it's such a good initiative and trust me, the schools really need any extra support they can get. Feel free to get in touch with me and I'll introduce you to find out more.