On Thursday the 9 of December, six pupils from Windermere School traveled to Workington to take part in the selection event for Dream Placement 2021.

 

Dream Placement is a project managed by the Centre for Leadership Performance, that brings together bright, motivated young pupil aged 16-18 with some of the most forward-looking and successful businesses in the country.

 

 

At 7:30am all six pupils had to meet at the dance studio to be registered and get on the bus for the hour and a half journey to Workington as they were part of the morning session. During the drive, Mrs Murray would test us on answering questions that our interviewers may ask us such as “what do you hope to get out of Dream Placement”.

 

When we arrived in Workington, we parked at Energus, a unique conference and training venue situated on the edge of the Lake District in West Cumbria. Energus offers inspiring flexible spaces with comprehensive business support and modernistic training facilities due to this, it was a perfect location for the Dream Placement to be held. https://www.energus.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When walking through the doors at Energus, we were greeted by Nicola Woodley who instructed us of what the next steps would be. We first had to pick up some badges with our names on them and get our photos taken. Next, we were allocated to a table and told to fill in a form, so the Dream Placement team know more about us.

 

After filling in the form, more pupils from different school’s/colleges started to arrive and they went through the same process of having their photos taken and being told to sit a certain table. When everyone arrived and filled in the forms, they were given the event began and representatives of each business began to sit at random tables with the students. We were then given 10 minutes to tell people on our tables more about ourselves and why we decided to participate in Dream Placement.

 

When the 10 minutes were over, we were then told to do some problem-solving activities such as finding out how firms could get younger people more interested in their business and what service they offer. After this, we were given a snack break and told to sit in the auditorium at the end of the corridor and wait for our two interviewers to be ready.

 

On our name badges we were given at the start of the process, they each had two of three letters, A, B, and C on them. Next to those letters were numbers that represented the order in which we would go through and be interviewed. Group A would go first and when their interviews were over group B would go and the same for group C.

 

When group C had finished, the afternoon Dream Placement candidates started to arrive and prepare for their interviews. At that point, the morning session had come to its end, and we handed in our name badges, said goodbye to the team, and headed off back to school.

 

The overall experience for Dream Placement for all of us I believe gave us another step into the future of our possible careers even if some of us don’t know what we would like to do in the future. Everyone at Dream Placement was very friendly and easy to talk to and helped us in any way they could.