SENIOR pupils at Hermitage Academy got a taste of what it was like to be a business professional last week.

Mind Vision, a company run by Gerry and Lindsay Stewart, arranged for graduates from Babcock to visit the school to assist with their business aware programme on Friday, November 3.

The Babcock graduates were there to inspire the pupils and to speak to them about how they got to where they are, the steps they took and the decisions they made.

Having only recently graduated they were in a good position to talk to the students about future career options and possibilities.

The S5 and S6 pupils were split into small groups, with a graduate to assist and were tasked with becoming professionals and thinking about how to sell individual products.

Pupils were involved in real life business decisions in relation to marketing, human resources, construction design, budgets, customer focus and social media.

In addition pupils developed their problem solving, prioritisation, budgeting and time management skills.

The aim of the tasks was to get the students to work together to decide on the best way to sell a product.

Over the course of the day, pupils learned about different aspects of marketing, business development and finance and had lots of opportunities to develop their communication, problem solving and presentation skills.

Gerry Stewart said: “It went really well at Hermitage Academy. I have just finished going through the feedback forms and all the pupils seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.

“They enjoyed working with the graduates who helped them to think about their future careers.”

Simon Foster, managing director of Babcock Clyde, said: “ Babcock is proud of its ongoing commitment to support the Mindvision UK Business Awareness Programme at Hermitage Academy.

“Our graduates delivered an engineer’s eye view of design within a wider business context to groups of S5/6 pupils. I hope that this innovative and exciting session was an experience that the young people really enjoyed.”

Babcock is the commercial partner of the Ministry of Defence at HM Naval Base Clyde. They provide in-service engineering support and maintenance of surface and submarine Navy vessels.

Babcock Marine Clyde is one of two Babcock companies in the team which provides engineering support, operates and maintains the NATO submarine Rescue System.

Babcock is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the project, including worldwide emergency deployment within 72 hours, maintaining the equipment and participating in a continuous programme of training to ensure operational personnel are in a constant state of readiness at all times.