Invite inspirational and dynamic business leaders from fast-growing companies to engage with your students about their career path.

What is a Career Talk?

Local business leaders will visit your school to speak about their unique experiences. They share insights, career guidance, lessons and tips to motivate and inspire your students to make informed decisions about their future.

Similar to a TED Talk, each Business Leader speaks for 8 - 10 minutes, followed by a lively Q&A session where students are able to ask a variety of questions.

Each encounter is designed to last one hour.

Speakers will ‘tell a story’ about their career path:

Speakers are not asked to prepare slides or come with demonstrations rather, they are briefed to ‘speak from the heart' about their career choices.

  • What inspired them to choose their career path
  • Subjects they studied and how these are relevant now
  • Their failures, as well as successes
  • What their company does and why this is important
  • What they enjoy most about their career
  • Skills currently relevant in the jobs they are doing now.

What is the impact of a Career Talk?

Career Talks allow students to hear from real-life role models who can demonstrate the relevance and connection of what is taught in the classroom - because they are creating the jobs right now!

They also allow students to gain an understanding of what different careers actually entail, while bringing the curriculum to life.

The goal of Career Talks is to equip students with the inspiration and information to make better-informed decisions about their future career paths.

Department for Education (DfE) statutory guidance for career planning requires teachers to embed careers learning within their schemes of work. Career Talks can help students to contextualise their learning and bring classroom subjects to life.

Furthermore, research by the Education and Employers Taskforce highlights that four or more student-employer encounters reduce the likelihood of a student becoming NEET by 86%.

This encounter will help and support you to meet the following Gatsby Benchmarks:

1. A stable careers programme

Our digital platform enables time-poor educators to create a structured careers programme quickly and simply. We provide educators with clear guidance on the types of events they can book and, using smart algorithms, make recommendations on which speakers and volunteers will have the most impact.

3. Addressing the needs of each pupil

With our advanced filtering system, we put control of the student-employer encounter firmly in the hands of the educator, ensuring they can select speakers who are best suited to inspire their students. Educators can filter by industry, gender, race, company revenue and growth.

4. Linking curriculum learning with careers

We encourage all educators to bring their subject to life with Student-Employer-Encounters. Our machine learning algorithms remember educator preferences, making it even easier for educators to filter local speakers based on their curriculum needs.

5. Encounters with employers and employees

Our service connects children and young people directly with business leaders from their local communities. Our digital platform recommends a varied programme of careers encounters including career talks, speed mentoring, enterprise activities and workplace visits, all of which can be booked instantly through our platform.

7. Encounters with further and higher education

We enable educators to connect with a wide range of employers and employees who can speak to young people about their career path. By providing a diverse perspective on how they have approached their careers, students will be able to understand the different academic and vocational routes that are available to them.

8. Personal guidance

Using our clever digital platform, Founders4Schools is able to take into consideration the individual needs of educators and students. This means we can guide them towards encounter types and potential speakers to ensure they have the greatest impact.

Curricular Mapping and useful research

From our research we found that this encounter type is most appropriate for the development of young people from 11 and up. Older pupils approaching decisions about post-16 or post-18 education and training participate in sessions targeting specific career readiness skills.

Do read the full report to get more information and context on this!

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