Young Professionals bring together over 1,300 students in Central London

On Thursday 7th July Young Professionals hosted the capital’s largest, in-person student career event of the year! The tremendous success saw over 1,300 students travel from as far as Scotland to join the convention held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference centre in Westminster.?

Young Professionals, founded in 2015, are school-leaver specialists whose mission is to bring better and more vibrant opportunities to students needing them the most. Exceeding 1,300 attendees at their latest event, over 65% of the students were female and 72% from ethnic minorities - Young Professionals are paving the way for equal opportunities for our next generation in the workplace. Having held hundreds of events over the last year with a student attendance of over 300,000 this Young Professionals Conference was the season finale of the school year 2021-22.?

The Young Professionals London Conference in Partnership with Version 1 brought together some of the world’s most prestigious employers to deliver a day bursting with opportunities to these young future leaders. The day’s schedule saw an auditorium filled to the brim eagerly watching panel discussions and talks from some global giants including Version 1, PwC, Goldman Sachs, Mazars, CIMA,?Spectris, BT, World Wide Technology and Google. Craig Fenton, the Managing Director of Strategy & Operations at Google, covered relevant and stimulating topics such as Artificial Intelligence and Google's advances on one of the most technologically ground breaking projects, DeepMind.?

Many of the team from Version 1 travelled over from Ireland to headline sponsor the London conference, bringing with them the interactive Metaverse. A main attraction of the day, the Metaverse enabled the students to visit a virtual reality community hub (Spatial Metaverse) where they viewed interactive artwork with people from all around the world using the Meta Quest 2 headsets.

"When you find your why, you will find your way" - Version 1

Uzma Ahmed, Early Careers Manager and headline sponsor Version 1 added, “The Version 1 team had a fun and insightful day at the Young Professionals London conference. It was amazing to see how engaged the students were at the event, their depth of research and preparation was unbelievable. The Version 1 team enjoyed opening the event and closing the event with a panel discussion. There was also a great opportunity on the day for a collaborative initiative with Young Professionals, running a competition for students to win an iPad! We hope to attend another event with Young Professionals in the future.”

Between insightful keynote speeches, the students were given extensive networking opportunities with 2 full floors of employers ready to offer their expert career guidance including Berkeley St. Edward, Freeths, Browne Jacobson, British Airways, Direct Line Group, EQUANS, Pinsent Masons, UBS, and the University of Law. Employers could also make the most of these sessions to engage with the leading young talent and gain bright new employment leads.?

Liza Smith, Employment & Skills Manager from Berkeley St. Edward, attended the event with five of the company’s finest graduate and apprentice employees. Not only were they impressed with the calibre of the students but also identified numerous potential applicants for their upcoming apprenticeship programme. Liza mentioned that as a result of this event, she was expecting to receive CV’s from several students of such talent, they are hoping to offer immediate interviews.

An outpouring of positive feedback has been seen all over social media, with a student TikTok user recently commenting "it was so much fun and so inspiring to see all the different opportunities on offer post A-levels!! Honestly such a great experience”. With the buzz of the event's success still circulating, it is no wonder Young Professionals are already receiving requests from both students and employers alike, for their next London Conference. If you would like to be a part of one of Young Professionals upcoming events please make contact via email: [email protected]?or social media.

Young Professionals UK, founded in 2015, are leading school-leavers experts whose mission is to bring better and more vibrant opportunities to students who need them the most. They have already helped thousands of students accelerate their careers with apprenticeship and work experience programs alongside some of the world’s leading companies. To stay tuned for future student or employer opportunities visit https://young-professionals.uk/?