Yesterday, KSA held a Careers Day for Stage 3 students. After the successful careers event with Alumni last month, this event focused on those in practice. There were a total of 10 practitioners that came from various practices in the South-East who were on hand to provide advice to our students on recruitment and the work of their practice. This is invaluable to our students at this point in their studies as they are now beginning to look for their year out work experience in practice.
After the presentations were given, the students split off into small groups and the practitioners rotated around each group during the course of the afternoon. Students were able to get advice on CVs/portfolios, have mock interviews and have their questions answered by the practitioners.
Professional Studies Advisor, Tim Carlyle who organised the day said that the practitioners really enjoyed the day – they said they were glad to help at what can be a daunting stage for students, and wished there had been something in their own
courses that had offered help in this way. They were also glad to be able to say that job prospects are now very much better – all students should be confident that they can find a reasonable job.
The students felt it very useful to meet real employers, and to get quite
few different personal perspectives on a range of topics , from their own work
examples and CVS, to what architecture is about in the real world.
Stage 3 student, Oliver Smail, added that the event yesterday was fantastic, hearing the architects talk about there experiences and what they get up to in the job made me fall in love with architecture all over again, very useful day. And interesting to meet and talk to the kind of people who are potential bosses of ours.
One student was actually made a job offer on the spot to become a Part 1 Architectural Assistant after finishing their BA (Hons) degree later this year.