North East businesses join forces at Vertu Motors Arena for Mock Interview Day

Representatives from 25 North East businesses support culmination of award-winning employability programme.

More than 300 students from schools across the North East and Tees Valley attended the Building My Skills Mock Interview Day at the home of Newcastle Eagles, Vertu Motors Arena on July 11th.

The Mock Interview Day is the culmination of the multi award-winning programme – coordinated by Esh Group on behalf of the region’s businesses and schools – which aims to raise students’ career aspirations by providing them with an introduction to the world of work, and an insight into sectors and jobs they may not otherwise have been aware of. Over 30 businesses from sectors such as legal, housing and banking took part in 2024’s Building My Skills and between them delivered a total of 94 sessions.

The programme launched in January and saw more than 4,500 students from seven secondary schools and sixth form colleges take part in four workshops each. After each workshop, students completed an online ‘checkpoint’ that will assist them when mapping out their own career aspirations, with topics including standing out from the competition and presenting yourself online, on paper, and in person.

25 businesses from the programme attended the Mock Interview Day where they hosted a panel of interviews for students aged between 13 and 18-year-old. The event gives students first-hand experience of what an interview is like in a professional environment, as well as an opportunity to explore their aspirational career further through one-to-one discussions with business role models.

Corporate Affairs Director at Esh Group, Darush Dodds, has celebrated the success of mock interview day, commenting: “The mock interview day is always a worthwhile event. It provides valuable interview experiences but can open the door to second interviews for businesses who have opportunities available, such as apprenticeships, traineeships or paid placements.

“Building My Skills is the personification of business-education collaboration. Throughout the year, connections between schools and businesses have been formed that may never have existed before this programme took place. More importantly, we have given over 4,500 students the platform to become employable once they leave school. Six months ago, when they started Building My Skills, they may not have known where their career path would lead them; hopefully, we have given them the boost they may have needed to decide their next steps.”

John Green, Assistant Head Teacher at St Robert of Newminster Catholic School, said: “We have been involved with Building My Skills for many years now and it always provides really good opportunities for our students. The Mock Interview Day is their first chance to engage and communicate with an employer on a one to one basis. It helps them think about how they can develop their employability skills and how they can prepare themselves for when they leave school, and they get a real job interview.”

Karen Marshall, Apprentice, Education and Engagement Lead at Accenture, said the programme provided a great opportunity to the region’s young people. She added: “Accenture have been involved with the delivery of Building My Skills since 2015 and have found it an invaluable programme, helping us reach thousands of school students across the North East.

“It has an excellent structure, enabling employers to support the development of transferrable skills including interview skills, with students over an entire academic year. It gives Accenture the opportunity to showcase the Digital Sector in the North East and to highlight fantastic career opportunities to a wide audience of young people and teachers, many of whom may not have realised the pathways to rewarding and highly paid careers open to them on their doorstep.

“It’s very well organised, the team at Esh make it very easy for businesses to participate, I’d encourage all employers to take part.”

Among the panellists was Esh’s project manager from the Tyne Bridge scheme who gave real life insight to budding engineers of what it is like to work on the restoration of a North East icon.

Planning has already started for the 2025 programme which will be launched later this year. If you would be interested in getting involved, contact Esh Group by visiting www.eshgroup.co.uk