Networking is a vital way of helping professionals develop and improve their skill set by:
- Stay on top of the latest industry trends
- Keep up to date with the job market
- Meet prospective mentors, partners and employer
- Gain access to the necessary resources that will help achieve further career development.
The Careers department at Northampton Academy recognises that skills such as networking are an essential asset to our students, as they continue to develop their awareness of the industry they aspire to be a part of.
Verity McGee, Early Careers Manager at Travis Perkins and Northampton Academy Enterprise Ambassador, led a discussion on the importance of effective networking and how it can impact on the development of careers.
Students practised their networking skills by participating in a mock networking scenario.
The scenario:
Students were invited to the opening of a new, large retail store in town. The owner wanted to get to know the local businesses better, so decided to turn it into a networking event. She invited professionals from a wide range of careers and industries to attend. Each student was provided with a job role and their task was to discover as many of the other attendees' roles as possible without directly asking them what their job role was. A tricky task, but effective in encouraging students to overcome their nerves when meeting new people, whilst honing their conversational skills to find out more about the colleagues attending the function.
Year 12 Enterprise Ambassadors will have the opportunity to further develop their networking skills during Careers events taking place later in the year. Many thanks to Verity for sharing her expertise in this area.