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The Farlington Apprentice
Farlington Apprentice was an internal competition run by Farlington School for Year 10 girls, aged 14 and 15 years old.
Over the 5 days, six pupils had to perform a range of tasks set by businesses in the community to determine which one of them would be hired.
Each day of the week one girl of the original six was eliminated.
Monday's challenge was run by the West Sussex County Times, Tuesday's by Harrison's catering company, Wednesday's by Harris Lord and Permanente Solutions Direct, Thursday's by Radio Mercury and Friday the last hurdle was to decide how to spend a hypothetical £1m gift to the school, the remaining two girls had to present their ideas to a panel.
Harris Lord's particular day was Wednesday where Justine Harris Joint MD of Harris Lord and Lisa Jarvis MD of Permanent Solutions Direct designed an assessment centre style day for the four remaining girls. This consisted of writing CVs, a team building session where we challenged them to build a structure at least 50cm tall, which could hold a small bottle of water with only a West Sussex County Times, a ball of string and some sticky tape, they had to write a letter asking for work experience to Radio Mercury, do a listening and memory test, a rigorous competency style interview to a panel, a computer assessment and an in-depth personality assessment which was provided free of charge by Colin Golding of Goldisc Training.
"The Farlington Apprentice was an inspired idea by Sara Greer, The Marketing Director of Farlington. The feedback from the girls and parents of the girls was incredibly positive.
The girls were put through rigorous challenges, which a lot of business people would have found difficult, frankly all the judges on the final day were really impressed, we had to keep reminding ourselves that these girls were only 15. An incredible amount of work went into that week, it was a fantastic project to be involved in and will have a lasting impact on all the girls that took part." Justine Harris, Harris Lord Recruitment, Horsham.
"I was delighted to be part of the whole Farlington Apprentice experience and was thoroughly impressed by the determination, commitment and focus that the finalists demonstrated - not to mention the high standard of CV's they produced and the manner in which they conducted themselves during structured, competency based interviews!" Lisa Jarvis, Permanent Solutions Direct, Henfield.
