What does it look like when an early-career hire leads a steering group for a national conference?
28th November 2025
This post was originally published on LinkedIn!
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending my second Peers in Careers conference in Birmingham. Having previously attended as a delegate from the University of Leeds, the conference looked a little different for me this year!
Over the past few months, I have been working on organising the conference and leading this year's Student Steering Group! We were responsible for organising and facilitating the icebreaker activity, roundtable discussions, and the 'fireside chat:' and I think it's safe to say we smashed it!
Every week, I brought the group a packed agenda of tasks for us to complete, ideas for us to brainstorm, and decisions that had to be made. Week by week, our output grew; from vague ideas about CV style bingo, to producing 14 mystery celebrity CVs; from voting on roundtable topics, to creating prompts and information sheets to spark conversation; and from a need for greater audience participation, to developing a unique 'debate' style format for the fireside chat!
After months of hard-work, it was absolutely amazing to get to see our vision come to life! 'Guess the CV' kicked the conference off with a burst of energy, and I loved going between tables, hearing snippets of the roundtable discussions. My favourite moment of the day was facilitating the 'fireside chat' debate between our students steering group, and two employers, focusing on the topic: Bridging the Gap Between University and Employer Collaboration. We touched on the factors shaping University-Employer partnerships, and got to the heart of how students and employers believe HE institutions should be shifting!
Another highlight for me was the student presentations! Not only was it an amazing opportunity for me to reflect (having presented at the conference whilst on placement within the University of Leeds' Careers Service two years ago), I absolutely loved getting up to speed on the developments in peer-to-peer services in Universities across the country! Peer to peer support is so important in empowering students to take control of their career journey, and it was amazing to feel that passion in the room!
I have never been a part of an organising committee for a large scale event like this (let alone heading a section of the organising group!) but I was very lucky to get to work alongside and be supported by amazing HE careers staff from institutions around the country. A big thank you to Fiona and Katie from GTI for all of the information and help: I couldn't have done it without you! And a final thank you to Emma, my amazing colleague at Gradconsult, who put me forward to lead the student steering group - I am so grateful for all of the opportunities you provide for me!
Peers in Careers 2025 was a brilliant event- full of knowledge exchange, inspiring stories and the most contagious energy!- and a definite high point in my career!
