RDT has recently established a mutually beneficial partnership with local school – Wrotham. We are working as part of the Careers and Enterprise Company’s initiative to match business and HR people with education professionals. The CIPD supported Enterprise Advisor network partners closely with their chosen school to help to establish and support the school’s careers strategy in line with the government’s Gatsby Benchmarks.
Our HR Director, Fiona Mason, has been working with Wrotham School in this capacity for about a year now.
During that time she has been involved in a wide range of activities, supported by our HR team and various enthusiastic RDT employees.
Fiona ran a session for Year 12 students was run by Fiona around how to get, and then make the most of the, work experience placement programme which is mandatory for all students of this age. RDT is now committed to hosting a number of Wrotham students in this capacity every year.
Another innovative collaboration that RDT has initiated with Wrotham School is to work with the A-Level film studies students to produce a number of short films about our people, our tech and our working practices, so watch this space for the results!
Careers events, mock interview sessions and meet the employer opportunities are all supported by our people and have a positive impact on both Wrotham students and RDT people. We were recently accredited by FSB for our work on the 30:30 programme – a speed interviewing initiative held at the school.
Our most recent initiative is specifically for the Year 11 students who are starting to think about college interviews, apprenticeship applications and part time job vacancy processes. We ran a series of sessions to help these young people understand more about interviews, how they are structured, what will happen and what colleges and employers are looking for in their candidates. Hopefully we offered more than the usual wear a suit and remember to have a firm handshake advice!
In addition to this, as part of our management training programme, a number of our trainees will be going to Wrotham School to support a mock interview session. This will give us an opportunity to identify any of the young people who may want to work in a technical environment in the future, and for everyone to practice their interview skills.
Meeting potential recruiters is important to provide students with an indication of qualifications, skills and attributes they need for the jobs of interest to them. We recently attended a careers fair at the school where we had an opportunity to meet pupils from years 8, 11, 12 and 13 to give them some help and guidance. This also gave us an opportunity to promote our graduate, trainee and apprenticeship roles to the young people that we met.