It's been a busy Autumn term for our Careers Team
Our Careers Team have hit the ground running this year, with a first term jam-packed full of activities and events for our students!
This term, Long Road Sixth Form students have had many excellent opportunities to learn about careers, meet directly with employers, listen to visiting speakers, and participate in hands-on activities.
The college has organised several big events attended by a huge range of employers. The Green Skills and Careers Event gave students a chance to meet employers in sustainable industries, whilst our recent STEM Careers Carousel was perfect for students interested in working in science in the future, from life sciences to engineering and even patent law. Our annual Careers Fair, our largest careers event of the year, had the widest variety. The college was visited by thirty-eight organisations over two days, representing sectors such as accountancy, construction, engineering, healthcare, life sciences, property management, and many more.
Several visiting experts came to talk about subject-specific topics and their own career journeys. Criminology students met Dr Carina O’Reilly, a senior lecturer at the University of Lincoln, who spoke about policing and community relations. Miguela Gonzalez, Culture and Inclusion Strategist at Abcam spoke to Sociology students about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), why companies need this, and her career starting with a degree in Chemistry to becoming a BBC journalist and then an EDI specialist. And we had a visit form Rachel Minnet and Caroline Sadler from Anglia Ruskin University to speak about routes into primary teaching.
Students also got the chance to participate in employer-led challenges. Those interested in engineering and architecture took part in a series of workshops with Ramboll. Students worked in teams to construct model bridges, working to both a financial and greenhouse emissions budget, culminating in a competition where each team put their bridge building skills to the test, competing to see whose bridge could hold the heaviest load of textbooks. Students interested in digital marketing had the chance to participate in the Sookio Marketing Challenge over several weeks with the founder of the company and two college alumni. They researched banking brands like Monzo, discussed how banks market themselves, analysed breakfast foods they found in their cupboards at home, and in the final full day challenge they designed their own deodorant brands.
We participated in two Cambridge LaunchPad Project Days at TTP and Sanofi, built a tetrahedron with Morgan Sindall, took part in a criminal investigation day with the University of Law, visited Astra Zeneca’s new DISC building, sent about 30 students on a National Citizen Service skills-building residential week in north Norfolk, and held the first of our three workshops on applying for higher and degree apprenticeships with the ASK Programme and three apprentices from Deloitte. In addition, we have been working with Form the Future to offer targeted careers guidance to students with Education and Health Care Plans (EHCPs), alongside our regular programme of careers guidance.
The New Year and the new term will see an equally packed programme of activities and we look forward to telling you about these in a few weeks. As part of our involvement in the Local Skills Improvement Plan, we were successful in securing funding from the Department for Education to buy VR headsets and to develop partnerships with healthcare and life science companies on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus to create new employability related VR content for students and employees. We are looking forward to launching this in 2024! In the meantime, you can keep in touch with our regular updates on the college LinkedIn page.
