Business Adviser

Using your business experience to help students set up and run a successful business over an academic year. This involves mentoring, facilitation, instilling business acumen and encouraging them to overcome and learn from various challenges and setbacks. You work closely with one or more Centre Leads (usually teaching staff) and sometimes other volunteers. This role requires an enhanced disclosure with the DBS Update Service and online safeguarding training.

The company teams are ‘learning by doing’ – they benefit from the continuity of your experience and guidance in working as a team, solving business problems, communicating, planning, etc. It is their business, your role is to guide, advise, mentor and encourage them to reflect upon their learning and transfer newly- developed skills into new situations .

As well as the satisfaction derived from making a real contribution to helping young people achieve their potential, these opportunities can help develop your self-confidence in a new situation as well as useful skills such as facilitation, mentoring and communication. The experience of helping a young company develop and grow over several months, encountering and tackling a variety of real business issues, can be very rewarding indeed.

These programmes run over an academic year, from Sept/Oct through to the end of the Spring Term, sometimes beyond. Teams that progress in the various competition elements can continue into June/July. Generally, your commitment would be to attend the weekly team meetings for at least one hour during term time (perhaps 20-25 meetings over the course of an academic year). These may be during the school day or run as extra-curricular activities.