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On Wednesday 8th February Year 12 and 13 Economists visited Société Générale in the City of London. They were exposed to a range of activities that both tested and developed their communication skills, team working skills and ability to work under pressure.

The workshop began with our students pairing up with students from another sixth form college. After introducing themselves, they then had to answer a specific question which had been asked in an interview before, such as "is a Jaffa Cake a biscuit or a cake?" and "If you could be any film character what would it be?" This was a great icebreaker activity, getting students to think on the spot and answer questions out of their comfort zone.

The next activity split the students into five groups where they had the opportunity to be interviewed by an employee from Société Générale. The professionals then gave them meaningful, individual feedback on how they could improve the way they interview. The professionals rotated around the group and each time the students had to answer a different question so that they were familiar with the kind of questions they would likely to be asked when interviewed. The students really enjoyed this aspect of the workshop and they were able to try out new strategies, such as the STAR strategy, that would improve the structure of the answers and gave them confidence in answering any question that they were given.

The final session was a trading game where students again worked in teams on behalf of a bank. They were given £20,000 to buy and sell shares over a period of six trading days. After each trading day they could sell or buy shares depending on whether they thought the share value was going to increase or decrease for that particular business after news stories were released about them. The aim of the game was to not run out of cash but to instead have the most valuable portfolio. Shueeb and Samira were in the winning team managing to make a substantial return on their investment in just 30 minutes of trading.

Mr M Huff
Business Studies and Economics Teacher