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The TXM Recruit Finance Director (pictured above at the 2018 Project House and Awards evening), is the latest TXM team member to take part in the Career WorkOut Workshop, this time at Radcliffe School, Wolverton, Milton Keynes.
4 min read
The TXM Recruit sponsored initiative invites guests from a range of different professional backgrounds to engage with and answer direct questions from the students about their professions, to allow students to look ‘under the hood’ of the diverse roles and responsibilities.
This unique workshop has the guest professionals sit in a circle each faced by 4 learners. A facilitator then instructs students to begin asking guests open questions about his or her personal experience of work.
The 'WorkOut’ is fast paced, easy and fun, as well as informative and helpful for the young people.
Interested in finding out how CSR activities can help your business? Check out our top reasons why it’s good for the soul of your business and its bottom line.
We spoke with TXM Recruit’s finance director and here’s what Mr Jaffer had to share:
Q: How did you become involved?
M: “I was asked to get involved because as a group we were sponsoring the event.
“I‘ve always wanted to volunteer to give something back to school age kids because I know when I was 15/16 I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do.
“Likewise, my 2 daughters now didn’t have a clue what they wanted to do, so I thought it would be great to have someone who’s currently working at a level of discipline to give words of wisdom to show what it’s like and encourage the students to consider a broader understanding of work and life”.
Q: How was the experience?
M: “The young people have 6 minutes in groups of 4 or 5 to ask questions of the volunteers then move on to the next volunteer. It was a bit like speed dating.
“In between the 6 minutes they are given a motivational and informative speech by the school careers workers encouraging them on what questions to ask, whether it be about teamwork, effectiveness; everything and anything goes really”.
Q: What sort of things did you share with them?
M: “The first question they all asked is how much do you earn!”
“Bare in mind they are 15/16 years old and have a diverse understanding and appreciation for work, even from each other.
“Some students asked really basic and fundamental questions like how long I have done this job and is this the only job I’ve had?
“whilst others asked more detailed questions, for example: how did you get to doing this job? what subjects did you study at university? did you have to put extra hours work in? Did you do professional exams?
“So it was really interesting for me because you can see how their mind was structured towards leading to the end game. It was just so great to see how passionate they were about getting that knowledge from us”.
Q: How well do you feel it went?
M: “I discovered that I was the only first timer and some people had done it up to 6 times.
“From that perspective everyone added value on different levels, and to be honest I liked it so much that I volunteered to do it again next month for the sixth formers.”
Q: How important is it for other businesses and professionals to offer their time?
M: “It’s really important, I can’t stress this enough. When I’ve come back to our offices I have encouraged my managers to consider volunteering because it’s important for the kids to understand that this is not just a finance guy that I’m talking to, they can talk to different levels.
“Every single one of those kids asked what I do and what does that entail, they didn’t realise there are 5 or 6 different jobs in a finance department from: accounts payables, accounts receivables, financial accounting, treasury, tax and more.
“I can empathise with them, when I was their age I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do for my A levels, never mind career. So it is ever so important we can expose as many of these young people to as wide a range of professions as possible to help them understand what is available to them.
“I encourage not only executives from our own TXM Group family to volunteer but also other professionals from as many industries as possible.”
