Yesterday I was given the opportunity to volunteer with Inspire and visit BSix College in Clapton with Dee and Lauren from Impact. We spent the day with 2 groups of Health and Social Science students who were on a course with Inspire to help them with work place skills. Our session was helping them with their interview techniques. None of us had been back in a college environment since we were there ourselves, we couldn’t believe how long ago it felt!
Lucy from Inspire had a great day of activities planned for us when we got there, and we had 2 classes across the morning. We spent the day encouraging positive interview behaviours, practicing competency based questions and we gave every student a one-on-one mock interview with feedback at the end.
The students were really receptive to us and were very keen to gain some real life working skills. It was really interesting to hear about the different levels of experience in the room – some people were working in jobs and some had never even attended an interview before! It was fascinating to speak to the students as they came from a really diverse range of backgrounds and there were lots of different personalities in the room.
The experience was eye opening for me and it was a great feeling knowing we might have helped someone with skills they could use for the rest of their life. I would encourage everybody to give volunteering a go, it is great to do your bit for society and you can gain from it on a personal level too!