Marketplace support

Opportunity types

Below you'll find a full list of opportunities you can offer schools and colleges in your area:

Skills sessions

This type of opportunity helps pupils and students learn a range of skills around employability, enterprise and soft skills like tips on how to find and keep a job. You can also outline what is required to work in your industry and the entry routes available.

Here are some examples:

Employability: Develop the skills to help young people find and keep a job. This could include things like CV writing, application forms and mock interviews.
Industry/techincal: Demonstrate the skills required for employment in your industry or technical field.
Soft skills: Present the personal skills, qualities and attitudes young people need to succeed after school or college.
Enterprise: Encourage young people to develop their business, leadership and entrepreneurial skills.

Inspiration event

An inspiration event helps bring industries to life. Offer site visits to your workplace, deliver workshops on specific jobs or provide young people with a real life business challenge to solve. Inspire young people to explore their career options and raise their aspirations.

Some examples can include:

Challenge: Use a group activity or game to present a real-life business challenge for young people to solve.
Workshop: Deliver a hands-on, practical workshop to spark the interest of young people.
Workplace visit: Invite a group of young people to your business and give them a real-life experience of what a job in your sector would be like.
Industry insight: Visit a school or college and get young people thinking about what a job in your sector would be like. Introduce the job types available and the tasks they would be expected to perform.

Career insight

Explain the job opportunities and routes into your industry at career events. Offer work placements to provide real-life experience of your sector or hold sessions with parents, carers and teachers to give them more knowledge of Scotland’s job landscape.

Career insight can include:

Work placement: Show young people what it's like to work in your business with a hands-on work placement. This might include getting young people involved in daily duties or shadowing work colleagues. For more support you can access our FAQs and reference materials here.
Career event: Attend a career event at a school or college to showcase current job opportunities and inspire young people to consider a career within your field.
Parent/carer session: Get involved with sessions targeted parents and carers to help support young people with school subject and career choices.
Teacher insight session: Bring industry insight into the classroom by offering sessions to teachers. These could be in the classroom or workplace.