Virtual interview experience essential for Grade 12 students
According to popular recruitment website Indeed.com, “COVID-19 has made virtual interviewing a necessary practice and its popularity amongst employers is likely to stick post-pandemic.”
Christel House South Africa, a non-profit no-fee school in Ottery (Cape Town), hosts an annual Speed Interview event with Human Resource professionals to help prepare its Grade 12 students for the future world of work. Now in its second year of being hosted virtually, the innovative event took place on 11 October and saw 15 Human Resource professionals from leading organisations around the world interview and give constructive feedback to 34 of the school’s Grade 12 students.
The event aimed to prepare students for the virtual interview process they are likely to experience in the future and to provide students with the opportunity to engage with the school’s corporate partners for possible future internship and employment opportunities.
Each student prepared a CV, researched the company and was given mock interview scenarios prior to the interview to help them prepare. On the day of the event, the 34 grade 12 students each had an opportunity to be interviewed one-on-one by one of 15 experienced HR professionals using video conferencing technology. The interviewers were from a variety of industries, including amongst others, the banking, transport, hospitality, and technology sectors. They reviewed each students interviewing skills and provided them with constructive feedback.
“I was interviewed by Dell Technologies and the interview process was quite exhilarating, knowing that I was interviewed by such a big company. I am very grateful to have received this opportunity,” said Noni A., a Grade 12 student at Christel House South Africa.
The event forms part of Christel House’s comprehensive Careers Program which provides career education, guidance, and support to its students from when they enter the school in Grade RR, to five years post matric when they start their professional careers. All the students who attend Christel House SA come from the most underserved and under-resourced communities on the Cape Flats. Through the school’s no fee, character-based and career-focused education model, they receive the preparation and support they need to find gainful employment.
Stats SA reports that the youth unemployment rate was 46,3% in Quarter 1 of 2021. This makes virtual volunteering interactions and events like these crucial to help students enter tertiary education, land bursaries, and find gainful employment opportunities.
Christel House SA, Career Development Manager, Louise de Marillac comments, “This event forms a vital part of the chain of career preparation activities, ensuring our learners are moving towards employment readiness. Adding the virtual component has been a gamechanger, allowing a wider group of companies from afar afield as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and other parts of South Africa, to interview our matrics. This is the first time our current matric students have been interviewed formally, and doing it virtually was a great preparation for being interviewed in both the current pandemic environment and the future world of work, where the mastery of technology is vital. Our matrics have had an absolute blast being interviewed today and gained valuable experience for their future.”
Christel House SA would like to express a special thank you to the following organisations who took part in the Speed Interview event: Allan Gray, Amdec Group, Cape Grace Hotel, Capitec Bank, Coronation, Dell Technologies, Julius Baer Foundation, Maersk (Shipping logistics), MariaMarina Foundation, Mazars, Metrofile, Paygate, Polyoak, RCI, and Roche.
Individuals or companies that would like to provide internship or work opportunities for Christel House’s students, can contact Christel House SA’s Career Development Department on 021 704 9441/2 OR 084 580 4081.
More about Christel House
Christel House South Africa is a non-profit school with a single mission: to break the cycle of poverty. It offers no-fee scholarships to students from some of Cape Town’s poorest neighbourhoods and supports them for 19 years (Grade RR to Grade 12 and five years post-matric) through character-based and career-focused education. The school’s beneficiaries include 762 students from grade RR to 12, 250+ post-matric students and more than 3000 parents and other members of the communities it serves.
The main criterion for admission to Christel House is not evidence of talent – but evidence of poverty, one measure of which is a maximum average income of R1,500 per household member per month. Key aspects of Christel House’s model include poverty mitigation services in the form of daily transport to school and back, professional health care, nutritious meals, psychosocial counselling, family assistance and college and career planning and support.
Christel House transforms the lives of its students and helps to build self-sufficient, contributing members of society.