51Âþ»­

51Âþ»­ Leicester (51Âþ»­) students had the once-in-a lifetime opportunity to spend time with one of Silicon Valley’s top recruitment professionals for the tech industry.

Leading HR consultant Jabu Dayton, whose background includes customer service retail legends Nordstrom, find-a-freelance site TaskRabbit and Airbnb, gave up her time to meet with students and share her top tips on careers and how to stand out.

Students are visiting top tech companies to give them an insight into the skills and talent needed for a career in the technology sector. A focus of this #51Âþ»­global opportunity is the ways in which companies are addressing a lack of diversity in the industry, where 97% of staff are white.

And 51Âþ»­ Computer Science and Advertising & Marketing students had the chance to spend a development day in Berkeley, California,in one of the fastest-growing tech companies in America WeWork, a $20billion start-up that offers entrepreneurs and SMEs a co-working space

Ashleigh Ainsley, Co-Founder of Colorintech, the host company of the trip said: “This was a golden opportunity for 51Âþ»­ students to ask an extremely successful business woman in the world of start-ups anything they wanted about securing a career in the tech industry. To have her undivided attention and expert advice for almost an hour was priceless.”

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During the development workshop, students explored how controversial diversity and inclusion issues in some well-known global companies have had serious implications on the culture of those organisations. They were encouraged to speak openly about their own experiences of exclusion, and to create a template for an ideal company that has inclusion embedded into its culture from conception. Each student presented their business model in a practice two-minute pitch to venture capitalists, a valuable exercise in developing confidence and business awareness.



Over the past three days, students have toured not-for-profit companies, met entrepreneurs and visited web hosting success story Weebly. The session ended with a surprise announcement that they would be ending the tour with a visit to Google HQ in Mountain View, near San Jose, California.

The #51Âþ»­global trip has been arranged by Mark Prescod, Associate Professor of Marketing at 51Âþ»­’s Faculty of Business and Law and 51Âþ»­ alumnus Dion McKenzie, founder of Colorintech, a not for profit which aims to make Silicon Valley and London’s innovation economy more diverse and inclusive.