The Business Value of Values
During the October Half Term – five Sixth Form students spent each morning working with industry professionals from advertising agency dentsu and one of the UK’s biggest tech companies, Salesforce in an exciting project titled “The Business Value of Values.”
The virtual work experience project was jointly designed and delivered by Salesforce & Dentsu to educate the students on the importance of being values-led in their career after school. The daily sessions gave give the students the opportunity to identify their own key values for their personal and professional development.
Each day focused around a panel of diverse representatives from both organisations – they showcased the variety of roles on offer, and shared their unique stories about how they got to where they are today and what their values mean to them.
Students were able to ask questions and take advice from some of the creative and tech industry’s brightest talent.
After the panels, students will be invited to join a group discussion before individually reflecting on what they’ve learnt by answering some competency based questions, building up their learning journals.
Great interview skills are incredibly important because we won’t stop doing them throughout our careers
Charlie Larrier
Being Interview Ready
The daily reflections prepared students for their mock interviews on the final day. As well as providing a wide range of workshops and sessions, on key values led subjects like ‘Trust and Teamwork’, ‘Innovation’ and ‘Equality in the Workplace’ – students also had the chance to prepare for a mock interview with a member of staff from Salesforce and international media agency, Dentsu.
Charlie Larrier, Year 12 student commented how she found the mock interviews really helpful stating “Great interview skills are incredibly important because we won’t stop doing them throughout our careers”.
Sofija Zorina, also in Year 12, commented “the mock interviews will help me in the future – the feedback was really useful on what went well and what we can improve”
Developing a Network of Contacts
Students got to spend time with employees from all levels of the business across dentsu and Salesforce.
Year 12 pupil Karina found this helped develop her industry contacts which she will use when she leaves the Academy. She added “Dentsu gave me a lot of LinkedIn profiles to get in touch with which is really useful to have contacts!”.
