Parkside Sixth student Tambirul Islam is celebrating following his success in securing a sought-after placement as an intern at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London.
Tam, currently a BTEC business student in Year 12, credits his success to the two interview skills events he attended organised by Form the Future: a Career Ready event at Barclays Eagle Labs in March, which covered group as well as one-on-one interviews, and a Signpost 2 Skills mock interview event held at 3aaa Cambridge in April.
At the Career Ready event, students from Parkside, Netherhall and Long Road sixth forms completed a group interview task, then took turns to interview each other. Volunteers Paul Grey from MediaTek and Sarah Stones from Plain Sailing were on hand to give professional advice to the students. In April, the Parkside students had the chance to be mock interviewed by Sharon Livermore from Polkadotfrog, Aaron Mortlock from Deloitte and Sarah Paveley, as well as receiving interview training from Charlotte Steggall of Form the Future.
Tam links his success directly to the help and advice he gained from these two events “I’ve had interviews before, but this was the best interview ever because of the help I received! Even though I was shaking under the table, I was able to give confident answers using the tips from the events”.
In particular, Tam found one piece of advice very useful:
“They told me that I could take a notebook into my interview, and that was the best thing ever! I didn’t think of it before, it seemed like cheating. But with my notes in front of me, my answers to questions were confident and well-thought out”.
The interview started with a team activity, where candidates had to be either landlords or tenants, coming to an agreement over the sale of some land. Remembering the tips from the practice group interview, Tam made meaningful contributions, remembered that the person who shouts the loudest isn’t the best, and took responsibility for making sure the team were aware of the task deadline. When asked for his strategy for success in this activity, he said that they simply “demonstrated the skills to handle anything that comes our way”.
