BT Calls in on College

Posting by Ranjit Hayer, Career Academy Manager

It’s been another busy week for the Business Career Academy students. Following the second year students trip to London, the new first year students have welcomed a visitor into College in the shape of BT Project Manager Tracie Padro.

The visit from BT was for a rather grandly titled “guru lecture”, which is a part of the Career Academy programme, a national initiative that raises the employability of young people. Lectures such as this one, form an important part of the programme, with mentoring, external visits and paid internships also forming part of the experience for students.

Tracie began the afternoon lecture by explaining how her first job at BT (updating the phonebook) has lead to a life-long career with BT. She has not actually worked for any other firm, although she has done secondments and placements in the Customer Relations and Finance departments, amongst others.

Tracie explained to the students the benefits of working with a large business like BT, which spends a lot of time investing in its staff. Tracie is lucky enough to work from home so went through the different ways in which she conducts meetings as her ‘team’ is often scattered around the UK and meeting up can be quite difficult.

Tracie explained the skills that she has developed over the years and the students were amazed to learn that she has in the past worked with teams of up to 20-30 people and never met some members of the team because they lived so far away. She explained that having the right skills to communicate with people is essential to any professional person.

This kind of first-hand knowledge is invaluable to the students who will have to put such skills to the test in the summer when they complete 6-week internships at a variety of businesses.

We are so grateful to Tracie for taking time out to deliver this guru lecture. She works very closely with the College and is part of the mentoring programme and sits on the Local Advisory Board too. She was a part of the programme last year when we first launched our Business Career Academy and has continued to be a stalwart supporter this year.