Student development

• Being professional: understand and grow the skills that will make you successful in the corporate world and project a professional image.

• Building your career plan: explore your career purpose and your personal brand so that you can target opportunities and build your career plan.

• Stand out from the crowd: create a CV and LinkedIn profile that are authentic.

• Interviews and Assessment Centres: how to prepare so that you feel confident in the final stages of the recruitment process.

• Mentoring: finding a mentor and developing a strong relationship to support your career goals.

• Being productive: building an effective routine to avoid procrastination and distractions, setting priorities and creating new positive habits.

• Developing your accountability: how to build a system that will empower you to work with deadlines and feel more confident working independently.

• Finding your purpose: exploring your values, motivations and passions so that you can find meaning in your career and life.

• Setting yourself up for success: kickstart the new year (calendar or academic) by clarifying your vision and goals, and create an action plan and new habits that will take you forward.

• Developing your self-knowledge and self-awareness: understanding who you are (values, strengths and personality traits) so that you can understand the impact you have around you.

• Being resilient: develop a new set of skills so that you feel confident dealing with setbacks and uncertainty.

• Coaching skills for the future: empower your students to support each other and give them skills that will serve them in their life and career.

"Catherine recently hosted a workshop to support our students to choose a career they love. She was friendly and relatable throughout and was able to engage the students with various activities throughout the workshop. At the end of the workshop, 100% of attendees agreed they understand how to choose a career they love, and also agreed they were likely to seek further support from the universities careers team."

Becki Cobb | Careers & Employability Adviser at the University of Lincoln

The Fashion Retail Academy is a unique, industry-led college. The FRA students receive high-quality training to equip them with the right skills to be successful in the Fashion Retail industry. However, based on feedback from employers, they tend to lack the professional skills needed in the corporate world.

I designed a 1-hour workshop to give the FRA students an overview of what 'being professional' means and how they can adapt their behaviour to project an appropriate professional image. I delivered this workshop to several groups of students during the FRA Progression Week in October 2019.

Wapping High School (East London) has developed a multi-faceted coaching programme to support its students and empower them to realise their personal and academic potential. Key Stage 3 students take part in peer-coaching sessions where they can develop their coaching and communication skills. This gives students a safe space to talk through the challenges they face at school, in their relationships and outside of school.

I designed a 2-hour coaching skills workshop to enable the students to grow their coaching skills, so that they are confident in coaching their peers. As an additional benefit, they will increase their levels of self-awareness, communication skills and empathy towards others.

I had the opportunity to be a volunteer coach with Yes Futures, a charity offering extra-curricular personal development programmes in primary and secondary schools, designed to empower young people to reach their personal potential. I coached primary and secondary school students, focusing on their self-awareness, confidence, resilience and communication skills.