Students fizz with excitement with work skills lessons from Coca-Cola

The venture is part of a new apprenticeship scheme to recruit local talent to its sales team.

College and sixth form students aged 17+ won the opportunity to learn directly from volunteers within the business at Youth Event Days held at Coca-Cola’s support centre in Peterborough last month.

Schools that attended the Youth Event Days included Thomas Deacon Academy, Bourne Academy, The Deepings School, Sawtry Village Academy and St Ivo School.

An Vermeulen, VP Field Sales at Coca-Cola Enterprises, said: “We are proud to be a truly local business in the regions within which we operate and are passionate about nurturing young talent by combining work with study.

“This scheme has provided a new and innovative way of engaging with local students, offering them the opportunity to engage with those already in the world of work, and develop important business skills.

“We’ve been incredibly impressed by the talent seen at all our workshops and congratulate all of those who have taken part in the Youth Event Days as well as those successful in moving forward to the next stage.

“Our sales teams look forward to engaging, guiding and developing our first 10 apprentices when they join in August.”

In total, four one-day workshops were hosted in Peterborough and CCE’s Head Office in Uxbridge, with over more than students from the regions invited to join after being shortlisted.

The skills based sessions included a range of engaging exercises including learning how to give a three minute elevator pitch and developing key interview techniques.

From these workshops, 42 successful candidates have now been invited to assessment days this month, to compete for 10 year-long apprenticeships with the business due to start at the beginning of August this year.

The project was supported by research from MyKindaFuture, which shows that 94 per cent of young people need employers to go into their place of education and run interactive career workshops, rather than waiting until young people have finished their education.