Careers and Education Fair 2017

Holly Page, Team Manager at AXA Insurance & career's committee member, reflects on the day.

Armed with some new material, our aim for the evening was to raise awareness of the huge range of careers available within the insurance industry and sell it as something to aspire to rather than fall into.

We set up our table in the hall and were then provided with a delicious dinner in the school canteen – I certainly don’t remember the food being that good when I was at school!

Over 90 exhibitors were in attendance, representing both universities and a wide range of careers from the armed forces to funeral care. The event itself started at 6.30pm and a slow trickle of parents and students began to come through the doors. For the first half an hour everyone seemed to just walk past our stand without really giving us a second glance – it was looking like it was going to be a long evening!

Before long, however, we had our first prospective candidate and after that it picked up to the point where we almost had a queue of people waiting to speak to us. We had discussions with a good number of parents and students; given the age of the students (years 9, 10 & 11) a lot of the questions revolved around apprenticeships. Using the brochures produced by the CII we were able to provide information around how to get started in the industry and what types of roles are available. The free CII mints & pens went down a treat as well!

All in all the evening proved to be a great success and we are really looking forward to our next event at Bolton University in November.