Normanhurst Careers Day School Visit

Normanhurst’s Careers Day is designed to expose students to the working world, the opportunity to explore into a range of potential careers that they may have never previously considered.
Giving students a chance to speak to industry professionals and ask any questions they may have, before embarking onto applying for roles or going into further education a number of employers were invited in to talk about their roles. Talking points including their day to day activities, how they got into their industry and the variety of different pathways into their sector.

Jenni was invited to give an insight to the working world of fashion. Speaking on her route into fashion, following an internship with Fashion Enter – Jenni then delved into the variety of different path that helps expose young people to a career in fashion nowadays. Students were quite unaware that university is not the only direct route into fashion, and may not secure you your dream role. Here she introduced the apprenticeship programme with Fashion Enter. The UK’s largest Fashion & Textile apprenticeship provider, Jenni spoke on the current and past roles, using case studies from some of the learners into how they got their apprenticeship. Outlining the course and what it entails, from the day to day duties to the training side of the course, students were intrigued to hear how many big companies (such as ASOS and M&S) had got on board on the programme.

“I always thought to work in such a big, well known company you needed to have a degree in fashion.”

After explaining the apprenticeship programme Jenni then went on to talk about the newly launched, Stitching Academy. In collaboration with ASOS, the programme aims to get over 120 young people a qualification in fashion within the first year of the course. With a high success rate, and inspiring stories of some of the past learners move into fashion head office roles, the students were intrigued to know more about the course and when they could get involved. Jenni spoke on some on some of the highlights of the course, including the BBC press features, ASOS’ Nick Robertson visiting and a feature in Company Magazine – students showed a strong interest in the press around the course. Those with an interest in the course seemed to have a particular interest in design and the production side of fashion, however unsure how to get started.

The presentation was rounded up with a full Q&A session.

‘Thank-you for coming in, the talk was really great and I feel as though it has given me some direction as to what path in fashion I want to take. After your talk I decided that I’m going to sixth form to do my A levels for 2 years, then after that I want to complete the level 4 fashion course. Thank you so much for coming in, I can’t tell you how much it has helped me.’

Charlotte