Enterprise Advisers
What is an Enterprise Adviser?
Your experience matters. Help schools and colleges shape futures.
Within The Pledge Partnership, there are numerous opportunities for an employer to engage with schools and colleges and the young people in them. However, an Enterprise Adviser (EA) is a specialist ‘employer’ volunteer working with an Enterprise Coordinator to help schools develop the quality and competencies needed in delivering excellent Careers Education.
In return, EAs also acquire an understanding of the current educational framework as well as schools’ own challenges – plus an opportunity to ‘fast-track’ their influencing skills for use back in their own environment!
Why Volunteer?
Working with an individual local school or college, your role as an Enterprise Adviser can help support pathways into your industry and shape young people’s futures. You can help bridge the gap between the world of work and education, working with the Careers Leader and wider senior leaders of the school or college to create opportunities for young people.
When it comes to the key roles we ask EAs to perform:
- Acting as a ‘critical friend’ to the Careers Leader and wider school in helping them to ensure that their Careers Programme has relevance and currency in the context of a rapidly-changing external environment
- Helping to ensure that ‘the employer has a voice within an institution that can sometimes be inward-looking and curriculum-focused
- Acting as a sounding board, advisor and perhaps even mentor to an individual Careers Leader who is sometimes slightly out of the mainstream – sometimes even lonely – in a role that, despite its Statutory obligations, sits to the side of the mainstream curriculum – if only because there is no GCSE in ‘Careers’
- Nationally, EAs are tasked with helping Careers Leaders to develop their own network of employer contacts. This is partially addressed by our own Pledge mechanism
- You’d typically meet with the school once a term and possibly meet/correspond outside of that for around 8 hours a term – although each case is different and you are always in control
There are a huge number of benefits to becoming an Enterprise Adviser, both personally and professionally
- Undertake strategic planning in a new context
- Develop your skills in communication and strategy development
- Support your local school or college to deliver world-class career guidance to their students
- Build strong working relationships with your local school or college and provide insight into your organisation and industry
- Join a national and local network to develop your own skills
- Give back to your local community
- Better understand the education sector and the challenges faced
