Part one held on the afternoon of Friday 31st March saw careers advice in the form of a Q&A panel discussion, a trading game with Deutsche Bank and two 1-hour long seminars. It was fantastic to welcome back OV Stephan Wade (1988) Russell Lowe (2000), Paul Giannecchini (2002), Ashley Evans (2007), Josh Seaton (2008), Bradley Allen (2010), Michael Evans (2011) and Frances Bentley (2012) as well as parents Sheridan Bird and Paul Anderson and Natalie Clemson from Pick Everard. All of our speakers gave excellent insights into their professions and companies, with representatives from Google, Advanced and Babcock Engineering. 

Part two on the Saturday saw seminars running at regular intervals throughout the day in Old Big School and FF9 in the STEM block on topics such as engineering, financial services, architecture, dentistry, teaching and physiotherapy. Many thanks to OV Dan Codd (1998), Nick Clewer (1998), Amit Chudasama (2001), Tom Narraine (2008), Tom Beasley (2008), Stuart Drinkwater (2008), Owain Jones (2009), Amo Panesar (2011), Catherine Smith (2013), Andreas Papastylianou (2013) and Orlando Woodburn (2013), as well as Katy Hanby from KPMG. All of the attendees commented on the high quality of the seminars and we are very thankful to everyone that gave up their time on a Saturday to come in to school and talk with our students.

There were also 16 exhibitors throughout the day in Big School. These included several of the schools corporate partners, Honeybourne Facilities, Wow Zone, Align Architecture, Unitemps, Tamworth Steel and Bell Lax Solicitors. Also present were The Army, The Belfry, Western Power, Advanced, EY, Gowling LLP, KPMG, Southall Harries and The University of Law. There were also a couple of voluunteers offering CV tips and careers advice, and it was good to see another couple of OV present on the Gowling stand, Sam Wallis (2007) and Richard Crawley (2008), as well as James King (2007) with his PoshCartCo. serving refreshments throughout. 

All those that attended got valuable insights into a range of careers, and made some excellent new contacts.

This event will be tweaked, but will now be an annual event, so we look forward to building on the success of the inaugural event in 2018.