National Schools Employability Challenge

Every year from October to March PwC (the London-based corporate finance company) runs a monthly National Schools Employability Challenge, which our Head of Careers and Work Experience, Mrs Sarah Newbery, encourages Sixth Form students to enter. The challenge is a two part online competition that students undertake at home in their own time. Both parts of the competition have to be completed within one month, and students must pass part one in order to progress to part two. Each month there are 10 winners and, in April, the 50 winners for 2015/2016 were invited to London to compete in the final.

This year, Lower Sixth student Kiki K. was one of 10 winners in January and, as a result, journeyed to London during the Easter break for the final.

Kiki spent the day completing a number of assessed activities, and working collaboratively with the other competitors. For their first activity the students were divided into five groups to undertake a psychometric test – normally completed by graduates – which combines both numerical and diagrammatic reasoning. During the following session, participants were placed in pairs and given professional and detailed information about formal job interviews. The pairs practised typical interview questions used by PwC, whilst judges walked round scoring performances. For the final session of the day the students were again placed into groups of 10, and tasked with finding innovative ways to attract graduate students to work at PwC. The most interesting ideas were shared with the rest of the group and then ranked according to preference, in order for the judges to choose the winning team.

The day concluded with an insight into Rate My Alumnus – a useful website that offers school leaver opportunities – and a talk by one of PwC’s successful school leavers, Paula Murnin.

Kiki did fantastically well to qualify for the final and gained valuable career insights from the event, finding the whole experience to be very inspiring. Well done Kiki!