This year I've had the opportunity to shake things up a bit by working with students from Cardinal Hume Catholic School as part of our One Million Futures initiative.
It aims to help one million people get to where they want to be; whether it’s in the classroom, the workplace or the boardroom. We are working with over 50 of the most inspiring social enterprises, charities and schools across the UK including our Newcastle office school partner, Cardinal Hume Catholic School in Gateshead.
It’s hard to say what my expectations were at the start of my mentoring journey, but I’ve been blown away by the effort and commitment of the students. They have interacted with the mentors, and each other, with great enthusiasm and passion, making my role all the more interesting and rewarding.
Having been at Deloitte for over 25 years, I have developed a set way of walking and talking that isn’t likely to elicit a consistent level of engagement from sixth form students! I feel this is one of the biggest challenges for us as mentors, to remove ourselves from the ‘corporate speak’ and create a connection that strikes the right balance of being informative, relevant and relatable to as many of the students as possible. Ultimately, we want them to see that we’re just normal people too, and anybody can succeed in professional services (or indeed any other career) with the right attitude and application.
Over the year we have set the sixth form students a number of challenges, from our TMT Predictions School Challenge, whereby they pitched an entrepreneurial business idea to a panel of experts and competed with other students from across the country; to a mock recruitment process, where the students experienced each phase of the process from application to interview. Over 50 CVs and cover letters were submitted, the best 20 were assessed by Deloitte with the top 5 students invited to our Newcastle office for a mock interview.
I was again taken aback by the students. They were attentive from the moment they entered the building, keen to impress and most importantly extremely professional. One of the most impressive things was their willingness to take feedback on board, both positive and developmental. This openness to development in particular is often something that falls away in later life, as people get more closed to what they perceive as criticism, so the attitude of the students is an absolute breath of fresh air.
Overall it has been a pleasure to act as a mentor to the students of Cardinal Hume, and I look forward to seeing them develop on their individual career journeys.
The icing on the cake is the feedback from the school. Martin Errington, Assistant Head Teacher, Cardinal Hume, said: “It can often be difficult to arrange meaningful employer engagement for students. We have been very fortunate in that the partnership with Deloitte has allowed a wide range of opportunities for our students. Deloitte’s willingness to offer both time and expertise has helped both the students and teaching staff of the school to focus on developing the skills and attributes required for the next steps in their pathways. A major reason why we want to take part in employer engagement is to raise the aspirations of our students.”
If you have the chance to get involved in something similar, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.