We just wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of SBIC’s social value activity this year to date…..
We value our relationship and collaborations with the local colleges, namely Trafford College Group, and Liz was more than happy to get an email from Sarah Alcock, Work Place Coordinator at the beginning of the year inquiring about our appetite to host students during College Industry Week.
The Level 3 Extended Diploma in Business students were to be matched with us for obvious reasons. The qualification is for students who want to progress onto a Degree with a Business theme, a higher level apprenticeship or into employment within a trainee management scheme. Past students have progressed into roles as marketing or HR executives, accountants and some have gone on to run their own successful businesses.
The SBIC management team, Bernard, John and Liz knew it was something they wanted to support and could facilitate with the help of the front of house ladies and businesses based in the centre. So after an initial meeting with Sarah a commitment was made to taking 4 students for the week.
Bernard, the Innovation Director led the planning, we wanted to make it as worthwhile as possible and he put together a thoughtful, challenging and interesting agenda for the students.
We had some amazingly supportive customers who engaged with the process and offered their time… Ascend Talent ran CV workshops, Age Check Certification Scheme showed the students their state of the art facial recognition technology, Tailored Ltd explained how they develop intelligent, robust 4D database solutions for their customers and last but not least Greg Middleton Wealth Management Jack Clark cleverly used the presentation he gave the students about wealth management as training time for himself too!
In addition, the students came in early to attend a breakfast meeting with our customers and guest speaker which gave them a flavour of how we support our customers and what networking looks like. They were tasked with developing a pitch to sell an office, honestly – we were keen to get a fresh perspective! Despite their nerves they delivered these to an invited audience on the last day using both power point and social media which was impressive.
Above – hard at work developing their office pitches!
To wrap up, the students were presented with a certificate of completion for the week and also had their CVs as well as all their new found knowledge and experiences to take away.
All in all a packed agenda and it’s fair to say they threw themselves into the activities. We enjoyed having them around and valued their feedback as this was our first student placement for some time. We learnt that they’d like even more customer engagement and this is something we hope to deliver next year as we build on this agenda, onward and upwards!
