Careers Seminar 2024
How do we equip our young people for life after school?
That's one of the purposes for the Careers Department at Mount Hutt College. A key component of this is our annual year 12 Careers Seminar which involves a day of sessions covering topics to help prepare students for work, university and how to cope as adults in the world. This is then followed by the students experiencing a formal interview, so that they are better prepared to make the best possible impression in any interviews that they experience in the future.
This year we had some wonderful support from members of the Methven community. Deidra O’Shea set the scene for the Wednesday sessions when she opened the seminar on the topic of ‘performing well in an interview’. She was ably supported by our wonderfully dramatic year 13 students who enacted some real life situations that Deidra had experienced in her many years of human resources work. Her practical advice and clear insights prepared the students well for the next day’s interviews and will give them all confidence heading into the future.
As well as this session we had presentations from the following locals, Steve Veix on personal branding and reputations. Ann-Marie Kennedy on wider tertiary life and how to best make decisions on the pathway best suited for each individual and Lauren Cartwright one of our younger staff members on preparing for University.
Young people heading into the future stages of their lives also have other pressures and stresses that they experience. Presentations by Eve Meyer, our school counsellor, talked about what to look for when experiencing stress and how to support friends and flatmates. Sarah Clifford from Citizens Advice Bureau spoke about how they can help support young people to find out where to go for help. Rory Smith from Attitude.org gave a presentation about overcoming obstacles and being comfortable who each of us are as individuals.
Industry representatives Diane Hunter from Swim NZ and Ken Hay from ECTo talked to the students about opportunities in the Sports Industry - especially swimming and about apprenticeships, especially electrical.
On Thursday May 9 the year 12 students arrived at school, somewhat nervous, to experience their formal interviews. It was great to see them arriving in the school library, nervous and uncertain and leaving the interviews with huge smiles on their faces, relief and knowledge that they can successfully express themselves in an interview situation. Our huge thanks goes out to Todd Holmes from Jackson Holmes, Simon and Rachel Wareing from Philip Wareing Ltd, Lisa Florence from MITO, Anita Body from Ruralco, Debs McKenzie Opuke pools, Kelly Olsen from Habit Health, Jason Watene from Opuke Small Builds and Sue Van Den Heuvel from South Pacific Seeds.
We live in a wonderful community and all the people above help to reinforce the cliche that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ or in this case wonderful young adults. They all gave up their valuable time to support our students and this is much appreciated by the Career Team at Mount Hutt College.
Ngā mihi
Stephen Millichamp
Careers Advisor and Vocational Pathways Coordinator