Leicester Award Gold:

Before breaking up for the holidays I completed my Leicester Award Gold in ‘Business Insight.’, an advanced skills development programme.

This Leicester Award consisted of 4 stages:

Stage 1: Workshop Introduction: During this time we were introduced to what the programme would consist of, we gained some advice from the Careers Development team running the Leicester Award. In the workshop we completed a Motivation and Career Anchors assessment – to highlight our priorities, which aspects in our life are most important and influence our career choices.

Stage 2: Business Visit: On this day we visited a local business called Inspirate, a company who aim to inspire, educate and challenge people through creativity. This happens through events, such as An Indian Summer (this is an unmissable summer festival) and other projects, seminars, talks or workshops. We met with event manager Jiten, who introduced us to the company’s values and gave us some background information since the companies start up in 2011. Jiten also set the challenge, which consisted of a problem the company was facing and trying to think of solutions.

Stage 3: Presentations: After the business visit we constructed our presentation by noting down a few solutions we had for the challenge set by Inspirate. Although we were unable to perform our presentation in front of Jiten himself we recorded our presentation and received feedback.

Stage 4: Assessment Centre and Reflection Workshop: During this mock assessment centre we were able to understand what employers look for, by specifically focusing on how we portrayed key skills such as teamwork, leadership, communication etc.

The overall final stage of the Leicester award programme is having your CV or live application reviewed by the Careers Development Service. This whole experience has allowed me to gain insight into the challenges creative businesses such as Inspirate face; It was also a great opportunity to interact with influential business leaders.