Firrhill Job Fair 2017 Feedback

Thursday

30 Nov

/ Parent Council, Parents' Evening / No comments yet

This page gives the Parent and Pupil Feedback from the June 2017 Job Fair

Parent Feedback

Thank you to all parents and professionals who attended the Firrhill Job Fair held on 16 June 2017. This was attended by more 53 parents and professionals and a wide range of careers were represented. The feedback on the event was extremely positive with 100% of respondents indicating that they viewed the event as a worthwhile and beneficial experience that they would happily attend next year. A few parents have agreed to help at next year’s event.

Thank you to everyone involved in organising and participating in the event.

There was considerable and useful feedback on ways to improve the event and these are summarised here:

Pre-event information
- Pre-event information to parents/industry participants could be improved including guidance on the sorts of promotional materials that pupils find helpful and on the format of the event.
- Could parents supply a brief summary of job attributes along with their Name, Job Title, and Organisation and choose a subject categorisation?
- A list of attendees with job title should be sent to parents (or displayed prominently in the hall) and given to pupils in advance so that pupils can plan their visit.
- Work with pupils on a questions list?
- Encourage parents to bring younger colleagues (less intimidating for young people).

Set up and Layout:
- More tables.
- More power points and leads.
- Screens to display posters.
- Wi-Fi so that participants can bring laptops to show websites.
- There were a number of comments on how to improve the flow of pupils and their movement around the exhibitors to avoid them pooling in the middle of the room. These include:-
  - A one-way flow with tables in the middle and round the sides (Christmas Fair layout?).
  - Staff encouraging movement around the room.
  - Pupils listing who they want to speak to in advance.
- Clearer subject categorisation might help the flow. Consider the following:-
  - STEM with specific categories eg Engineering, Construction, Computing/IT, Medical/Health
  - Arts (including Creative and Literature)
  - Social Science
  - Entrepreneurial
  - Further and Higher Education
  - Modern Apprenticeships
- Better and more prominent signage for individuals and subject categories so that pupils can easily find the people they want to speak to and parents know who to direct them to as conversations flow.
Pupil engagement
- Most people commented that the pupils seem well informed and engaged, although shy and many required a proactive approach from parents. Suggestions to improve engagement included:
  - Asking pupils to make a list of who they want to speak in advance.
  - Priming pupils with questions in advance.
  - Encourage pupils to circulate individually rather than with friends.
Marketing and Timing:
- Is the timing of the event appropriate? Should we schedule it earlier in the academic year at the point when students are about to make subject choices either in S3 and S4?
- Should we target S2 before broad subject choices are made?
- Could the event be promoted at parents’ evening?
Eventbrite
- The Business and Enterprise Group used Eventbrite for the first time and 94% of respondents reported positively on its use. Concerns expressed included the impersonal nature of Eventbrite emails, the number of clicks to register and how to alert the Business and Enterprise Group of any cancellations.

Pupil Feedback

This is a summary of the pupils feedback:

	No of Replies	Did the job fair help you		Did the job fair give you more information and ideas on careers you were considering		If you had a career in mind was it covered		Would you attend again
		Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Allermuir	40	39	1	37	3	29	9	40	–
Braidlaw	29	24	5	25	4	21	4	27	2 (Both in S6)
Caerketton	35	33	2	34	1	29	3	35	–
Darroch	40		3	34	6	31	7	33	6
	144	96	11	130	14	110	23	135	8

The full dataset is available here as an Excel Spreadsheet

Firrhill Job Fair 2017 Feedback