From Classroom to Career: A Student’s Work Experience Journey

For many school students, the arrival of summer signals not only the end of another academic year but also the start of new opportunities. As a proud local employer in Tamworth and the surrounding areas, Shire Leasing is deeply committed to giving back to our community.

By opening our doors to students for work experience placements each year, we aim to inspire and equip the next generation with the practical skills, confidence and insights they need to thrive in the working world. By helping young people make the transition from classroom to workplace, we’re investing not just in our community’s future, but in the future strength of our local businesses too.

What’s it like to gain work experience at Shire Leasing?

Year 12 student, Louis shares his story:

For a week in June, I completed my year 12 work experience at Shire Leasing. Shire Leasing is a business finance company who offer flexible funding to a vast variety of businesses. They can help fund an extensive range of business needs from coffee machines for cafes to cows for farms. I chose to enquire for a placement at Shire Leasing as I am an aspiring entrepreneur and wanted to gain insight into how businesses operate across departments, from marketing to finalising business deals.

During my placement at Shire Leasing, I was assigned a variety of tasks, some of which were:

• Designing posts for social media platforms
• Processing deal admin from computer systems
• Creating vital ‘e-sign’ documents for customers to fill out
• Helping with the authentication of customer and business identities
• Shadowing in business operations tasks

Throughout my time at Shire Leasing, I was given the opportunity to gain and develop a variety of skills, such as: the fundamentals of marketing, graphic design for both online and physical products and configuring online documents. I gained a lot of valuable knowledge during the week however, I think the most impactful thing that I learnt was how vital it is for team members across the whole business to work collaboratively and how every stage in the business process requires correct practice and effort from the previous stages.

At Shire Leasing, what surprised me the most was the extensive list of the different types of funding available to businesses. I was shocked at how diverse Shire Leasing is in their wide array of services and how willing they are to support so many different businesses in so many different industries.

One particular day really stuck out to me:

• I started work as usual at 9am, I got in and was greeted by everyone and got started on my tasks for the day.
• My first task was to clear out proposals from different companies off of Shire’s online logging system.
• Once I had finished doing that I was given the opportunity to sit in with an employee to watch the process of receiving and inputting all customer information. I did this with Natalie from the Operations department, and she took me through step by step ensuring I understood and was confident in the process she was demonstrating.
• Shortly after, I shadowed Bailey, who's also from the Operations department. He took me through the whole process of confirming the correct bank details had been given and ensuring that all previous documents and fields of information were fully completed.

A big takeaway for me this week was how friendly the employees were. From the first day there was never a moment where I felt unsure and unable to ask for help. Everyone at Shire Leasing made themselves very approachable and were happy to answer any questions about the business.

For me the most challenging aspect of this week's work experience was constantly overthinking designs I made whilst in the Marketing department. However, Jen and Mitali were both super encouraging and helpful in finding ways for me to adapt my ideas and helping me improve designs without feeling put down or judged at all.

I’d say my biggest highlights were:

• Successfully designing a range of social media posts
• Correctly creating and sending important business documents to customers
• Getting out of my comfort zone to converse with employees without hesitating to ask questions to further my understanding

I've learnt to be more confident in myself and my ability, and having trust in my own ideas and thinking. I found that I was able to quickly grasp business concepts and understand the processes shown to me. I found the marketing department interested me the most and I felt it really stuck with me. I would 100% love to pursue a career in marketing.

Whilst I already had it in mind that it's what I wanted to do when I'm older, the work experience helped solidify that idea within myself. I feel marketing is an industry that seems really interesting and equally as enjoyable and I’d love to be working in it in the future. Following this work experience week, my next steps will be to continue to work hard in school to achieve my A-levels, and I would like to further develop and build my understanding of marketing.

To do this I plan to continue to learn new information online and to further build my design skills using a range of online software. As well as this, I'd like to keep on getting myself out of my comfort zone and take on more challenges that will test my ability and help me improve.

Supporting the next generation

We're proud to play a part in nurturing young talent. From helping students like Louis build the skills and confidence they need to succeed in their future careers, through to offering continuous development and growth opportunities for our young employees (many of which have gone on to achieve personal recognition in industry awards).

It's no wonder we have won an award for our Outstanding Commitment to Staff.

To learn more about what it is like to work at Shire Leasing, visit our careers page.