PICTURES: Kilkenny student takes home gold at careers competition

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A Kilkenny student has won first place after undertaking a work experience placement and fostering independent career research.

Sarah Dunne from Presentation School Kilkenny won first place in The Careers in Tourism category. She chose work experience placement in Meubles Café in Kilkenny and would like to pursue a career in café management.

Each of the students in the winning categories won a MacBook Air laptop, those who came in 2nd place won Samsung Tablet and 3rd place students won Apple AirPods. There were also prizes for all those commended. The four winning schools came away with €1,000 for their school programmes.

From astronaut training in NASA to experiencing the hustle and bustle of the European Parliament, the sky was the limit for almost 1500 students who entered this year’s AIB Future Sparks Career Skills Competition by CareersPortal.

And today the winners descended on Dublin as secondary school students, their families, teachers, and guidance counsellors gathered from across the country to attend the awards ceremony at the Clock Tower in the Department of Education.

The competition, which was open to all senior cycle students who have undertaken a work experience placement, was developed 14 years ago by Ireland’s award-winning and leading career guidance website CareersPortal. 

The competition encourages students to focus on the importance of career skills and understand the role these transferable skills can play in their future careers.

Close to 1500 students entered the competition this year and students could enter either in English or Irish through a written submission or Vlog entry. 

The 33 winning entries were selected from an impressive shortlist that included a diverse range of occupations from across all sectors which saw students working in microbiology labs, food production sites, game design, primary schools, hair salons and hotels to students lucky enough to gain work experience in NASA learning how to become an astronaut and a student who secured a trip to Strasbourg to experience becoming a Member of the European Parliament!