“Develop the career you want“ event
On April 6th attended a Chamber of Commerce- Future Faces event hosted at Deutsche Bank. It was suggested by Neha, who wasn’t able to attend with me but she told me about how these events are hosted at Deutsche Bank occasionally and how good there were so she organised for me to go with her fellow colleague at Deutsche Bank.
The event was organised by Future Faces, part of the Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Deutsche Bank. The event start time was listed at 5:30pm and me being me, I got to the bank suuuper early so when I arrived there were no other delegates there yet. I met with Swathi (Neha’s friend) and was welcomed with tea, coffee and juice in the main room. I sat down and waited for more people to arrive.
(Anticlockwise from left- Waiting at the beginning of the event, slides during the break, my event name tag and a photo with Rachel Halsall on the left and Rachel Donath in blue on the right)
The prospect of networking scared me quite a bit as I sat there alone for a while but as the people started coming into the room, they all looked really friendly and nice and I shook some hands and met some people. Still terrified as the room filled with people, the two lead hosts began the evening. Their names were Rachel Donath and Rachel Halsall.
The golden rule of the night- don’t get comfy in one chair as we’d be moving around all night.
We started the evening with an activity- we were told to pair up with someone we didn’t know at all, which was very easy for me since I knew only one person in the whole room, and we had to take turns to talk about who we were and what we wanted to achieve from the event. We did this 3 times with different pairings answering different questions each time and I thought it was a really good icebreaker activity and I felt much more comfortable after that.
Following that, Rachel Donath then talked about her background and how we lived our lives in three main phases- education, work then retirement- however she pointed out that even though we were living till past 100 years old nowadays, the classic retirement age is still around 65 but people were typically working past that age. This means that we would be working for much longer and that it was important to find a job that we enjoyed. We might not start out knowing what our ideal job is but with experience we would be able to find that job and be happy in it.
Then Rachel Halsall talked about being told she was bad at math at school so that’s what she believed until she took some exams later in life and passed them and realised that she believed she was bad at it for a long time and we should learn about our own narratives and this led to the next activity.
We got into pairs again and took turns spending 5 minutes to talk about our own narratives that we think we have and which ones we wanted to hold onto but also what ones we wanted to leave behind. I talked about how I was never anywhere near the top of my class when it came to exams and marks and how coming to uni really solidified that for me. My pairing commented on it afterwards saying how funny it was to hear that because she knew someone that was the top of his class until he got to university and he couldn’t cope with not being at the top and that was interesting to hear as it was something I had never thought about too much.
Then we took a little break and Rachel Donath talked about networking. She said there were three main groups of people you network with- personal, operational and strategic. She told us a story about how she meets with one of her old teachers at the same time, the same place, eats the same dish and discuss things not just job related but a whole range of topics. This illustrates her point of having a wide variety of friends and contacts in all kinds of industries and from all walks of life so that you can see things from a perspective different to yours.
Then we had a Q&A. One person asked about the usage of positive language during interviews while another asked about how to approach a situation whereby he loves his job but his girlfriend doesn’t and he wanted to know how he could make her happier . The two Rachels finished off the main event of the evening by writing one thing we wanted to work on after this event onto a post it note and stuck it on a wall
Following this, there was free wine and canapes waiting for us just outside the main room 😃
(Free wine and nibbles table! 🥂)
The Rachel’s told us to try talk to at least 3 people before we left to make the most of the event so I grabbed some chips and I managed it! Also managed to add some people on LinkedIn too which is great as I’ve been working on my profile over the last few months.
I left feeling really positive and more confident in my networking skills than when I walked into the building. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this event and thought it would just consist of speeches all night but it was a lot more interesting and I learned more than I thought I would. I’m usually very fidigity when it comes to sitting down for long periods of time but the two Rachels kept us moving around often so I didn’t feel uncomfortable and they had very interesting personal stories. I had a really fun evening and hope to attend another event soon and hopefully see some of the same faces again!
