National Careers Week review.
#NCW2017 was an amazing, exhausting, fun, far-reaching, exciting and life-changing experience for everyone involved.
There were events held in schools, colleges, universities and businesses to support young people in their career aspirations, pathways and to increase awareness of the career options for now and the future.
Across the UK between 6th and 11th March we saw over 16,300 uses of the #NCW2017 Twitter hashtag, Retweets from The Mayor of London to his 2.66 million followers, involvement from Robert Halfon the Skills Minister, Archbishop John Sentamu, Russell Brand and The XX as well as Transatlantic engagement from Vala Ashfar the Director of Salesforce and his 180,000 followers.
Our NCW launch event at UTC@MediaCityUK in Manchester drew a crowd of 200+, students and parents and employers such as BAE Systems, ITV, The Manufacturing Institute, University of Salford and Cogent – the skills council for the Chemical Industry and many others. The keynote speaker, Phillip Speed is the CEO of Quantum Base who make nano-security systems for industry and governments. His story was one of growing up just like the students at the UTC in Salford, boxing and running his way through his teens in those sams streets before embarking on a careers in Computing and Technology in Silicon Valley in the USA.
The London Launch at Lister School was attended by over 100 people and saw students involved in workshops run by many businesses and charities, a business breakfast and a keynote from Jonathan Akwue from DigitasLBi_UK to inspiore the young people present…two amazing events and this was just the opening day!
Over the course of the week we had Twitter mentions and engagement from hundreds of people across the spectrum of influence in the UK, Ireland, the USA and Australia (that we know of!).
Becoming a Director of National Careers Week a year ago was a no-brainer of an idea and it has been a tough and exciting ride – the Directors and Shareholders worked very hard to make #NCW2017 have an impact and we feel we have succeeded. There is a review report being written as we speak and some more statistical analysis but it is all adding up to a brilliant success and paved the way for a superb #NCW2018 which is 5th – 10th March 2018.
We are currently building the resources on the www.nationalcareersweek.com website and continue with our aim of wanting to Make Every Week Careers Week in a meaningful way for schools and businesses alike.