Inspiring Automotive Women Day, Career Speed Networking Event

Career Speed Networking events are usually part of a loud, exciting and fun activity which involves a range of volunteers coming together to chat with small groups of enthusiastic young people about their jobs.

This activity at our 2020 Inspiring Automotive Women Day event was no different, even when delivered virtually! The activity was designed to expose the students to a range of female business professionals working in the automotive industry and to hear about their career pathways, the businesses they work for and about the automotive sector as a whole.

As the event day was held digitally, this activity saw the 7 participating schools split into a number of networking rooms on the digital conferencing platform. In the networking room, female students were eagerly met by one of our inspiring volunteers where they spent several minutes asking a variety of questions about a set discussion topic. At the end of the session, the volunteer then moved onto the next networking room, giving each set of students a fantastic opportunity to speak with 6 of the volunteers.

There were many discussion topics covered which provided the volunteers a great opportunity to fully engage with the students about their careers in the automotive industry. The discussion topics also allowed a platform for the students to ask many interesting and thought-provoking questions.

Our volunteers and schools who took part have provided some amazing feedback about their experience including what they personally gained, how taking part made them feel and what they felt the students gained from this experience.

“This was an excellent event and running it virtually allowed an extremely effective opportunity to talk to multiple schools and pupils in a short time. I thoroughly enjoyed being involved and having the opportunity to share my personal experiences on how I got into automotive and my journey since.” {NAME}

“I thought the day was extremely well run, with the Career Speeding Networking sessions going down particularly well with the students as they had the chance to speak and ask questions to the volunteers.” – Susan Beddoes, Careers Adviser, Trinity Academy in Thorne

We would like to thank Jo Bright, Connie Wheeler and Sarah Symcox from Volvo Car UK, Rasha Hassen-Din and Christeen Mendis from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, April Wyatt from Waylands Automotive, Shelley Phillips from Marshall Motor Company and Holly Ballantine from CDK Global, for participating in this event.

Article written by Nicola Thompson, Inspiring Super-Network Manager