Local businesses flock to Northampton school to help mentor students

The workshops ran in various locations at Northampton Academy covering topics such as personal development, interview skills and team-building.

Students 'relished' the opportunity to fine tune their interview skills with business organisations such as Travis Perkins, Opus Energy, Smurfit Kappa, Barclaycard, The British Army, The and University of Northampton.

Karen Betty, the Careers and Enterprise manager at Northampton Academy who organised the event, said: “Maximise Your Potential Day’ is part of the academy’s six-month learning programme on career development for year 10 and it was an excellent and invaluable opportunity for them to put theory into practice, as with the year 12 students who also took part.

"We were delighted to see so many business volunteers sharing their career expertise and pathways knowledge to guide students towards the important decisions they will make post-16.

“We have received lots of really positive e-mails back from the businesses that took part. Following the event, we are also very pleased that Siemens want to work with a group of prospective engineers from Northampton Academy and that Opus Energy is employing a number of our student ambassadors over the summer holidays.

“On behalf of everyone at the academy, I would like to thank all the visitors that gave their time for this event which was well received by all involved and an amazing learning experience for our students.”

Students were smartly dressed in business clothes and practised a range of professional skills to help impress prospective universities, employers, colleagues and clients.

Dexter Maywaka, a year 10 student, who took part in the event on Friday (March 24) said: “I really enjoyed the day as it gave me the chance to meet lots of different employers and find out about different roles within a company.

"The mock interviews were quite scary to start with, but I took the feedback from the first interview and used it in my second one.

"Dressing in a suit made me more aware of how it is in the business world and the employer said that he would have offered me the job if I’d been applying to him at that time.”