Recruitment at Oasis Brightstowe
Bristol WORKS facilitated two workshops with Year 10 students studying Business GCSE at Oasis Brightstowe. Students worked alongside representatives from Signature Recruitment and learnt about this growing area of work, and pathways to pursuing a career in this industry.
After hearing about the reasons why Amelia and Victoria, the two employees from Signature Recruitment, enjoyed their work, teams of students worked together to decide on key aspects of an effective CV. They learnt about the need to include education, work experience, hobbies, extra-curricular activities, and personal characteristics. Students found it useful to be able to consider these categories in relation to their own experiences and had discussions around what they could include when making their own CV.
During the next section of the workshop, students were interested to learn how important it is for companies to conduct efficient and effective recruitment to develop a reliable and productive work force. Amelia and Victoria explained that even if a company is leading in their field, they aren’t usually experts in recruitment, hence the market for this area of work. Students benefited from observing a role play between a recruitment company representative, and a company looking for a specific candidate to work in a candle making company. Through this exercise they gained an understanding of the different departments within a company such as finance, marketing, the warehouse team and human resources.
Leading on from the last activity, students were given a number of example CVs of applicants for a marketing role at the candle making company. They worked together to identify the strengths and areas for improvement for each candidate, and decided which they thought would be in the strongest position to be offered the role. It was great to see students using their communication and problem-solving skills in completing this task.
The workshop concluded with a question and answer with the Signature Recruitment staff. Students demonstrated their confidence and analysis skills during this activity, something Amelia and Victoria noted as some of the skills that would lead to a successful role in recruitment.
With it being such an important first step for gaining employment, one of the students reflected that ‘I feel more confident in finding a job now that I know about CVs’, and Victoria commented that ‘the students seemed really engaged and got to experience a real taster of what a career in recruitment could be like’ and an added bonus being they also got to ‘think about their own CVs’.
