Lambeth Academy ran a series of mock interviews across four days for their year 10, 11, 12 and 13 students with a number of employers. Mock interviews are a great way to help your students prepare for the world of work. Discover how Inspiring the Future volunteers can support mock interviews at your school:
Inspiring the Future as a resource
Mock interviews can require a large number of volunteers. Even if your school, like Lambeth Academy, has a number of strong partnerships with employers the Inspiring the Future portal can help you to find the extra volunteers from the world of work you might require for such a large scale event.
Other benefits of using the Inpsiring the Future platform Lambeth Academy noted were:
- Sourcing volunteers via Inspiring the Future was easy, efficient and very quick
- Being able to find and invite a large number of volunteers in a short span of time
- Ability to see a summary of the volunteer’s profession and expertise which can help to plan future events by inviting them again.
Running mock interviews
If you’re unsure of how to facilitate mock interviews, follow Lambeth Academy’s guide:
- A year group a day
- Run it as a whole day activity
- Ensure students have at least four experiences of a job interview with a professional
- Make sure the students have enough time to ask the interviewers questions too so they can learn about the range of different professions.
The impact of mock interviews
Lambeth Academy says the feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive. The most common being that students were very anxious before the interview but the volunteers made them feel relaxed and the interview often turned out to be a friendly conversation. Further impact noticed included:
- Increased confidence
- Improved interview skills
- Students reflect on how their strengths and interests could link to potential career pathways
- Confidence communicating with employers when undertaking work experience placements.
Improving the current mock interview process
In the future, Lambeth Academy would like to make more effort to pair students with interviewers who are in professions related to the students’ career preferences. For example, pairing a student who is planning to study a science-related course at university with a professional from the STEM industries could potentially have a deeper impact than a random paring.
Thank you to Maria, Careers and Higher Education Coordinator at Lambeth Academy, for taking the time to share how the school has used Inspiring the Future to help facilitate mock interviews.
Ready to start planning your own mock interviews activity? To find further resources and to start inviting volunteers to support log in to your account or sign up at the top of the page.