Energy Recruitment Work Experience: Lily’s Story
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A week-long energy recruitment work experience placement at Astute People gave student Lily from Brune Park School insight into recruitment, marketing, and office operations within the energy sector.
This week, Astute People welcomed Lily, a student from Brune Park School in Gosport, for a work experience placement across the business.
The programme gave her hands-on exposure to the world of technical recruitment and marketing within the UK energy sector.
Work Experience at Astute People
Lily chose Astute because she had family connections to the business and wanted to experience a professional office environment for the first time.
She described the experience as engaging and surprising, noting it was “not as boring as expected.”
Throughout the week, Lily supported a range of activities including charity research, creating marketing materials for a Young Lives vs Cancer bake sale, and building an internal events calendar.
She also worked with the marketing team on competitor analysis, reviewing industry websites and social media channels, and contributed to early-stage creative branding work. It was, by Lily’s own account, the part of the week where she felt most comfortable putting her own ideas forward.
Later in the week, Lily assisted with administrative tasks including office preparation for new starters and general operational support.
By the end of the placement, Lily said she had a much clearer picture of what a career in a professional services environment actually looks like day to day — from the pace of client and candidate communication to the amount of planning that sits behind even small marketing projects. She left with a stronger sense of what office-based careers involve, beyond what’s visible from the outside.
What Lily Enjoyed Most
- Most enjoyable task: Working with the marketing team and creative projects
- Key learning goal: Understanding day-to-day office operations and professional workflows
Supporting Early Careers in Energy Recruitment
Head of People Sam Bradshaw praised Lily’s contribution and highlighted the importance of offering meaningful energy recruitment work experience placements to students across the South Coast.
Astute People actively supports early careers development through partnerships with organisations such as EBP and the Solent LEP, helping to connect young people with career pathways in technical industries.
These partnerships give students exposure to sectors they might never otherwise consider, at a stage when career decisions are still being shaped — something Astute sees as directly relevant to the long-term skills pipeline across UK energy and engineering.
Founder Terry Buckel also plays a strategic role in regional education engagement as a board member of EBP, reinforcing the company’s commitment to talent development across the region.
About the Work Experience Programme
Astute welcomes work experience placements from schools, colleges, and universities, helping students gain real-world insight into recruitment, energy, and professional services environments.
These initiatives support long-term workforce development across sectors including nuclear, renewables, and conventional power generation — and reflect a wider belief at Astute that energy recruitment work experience placements like Lily’s help build the pipeline of talent the sector will need in years to come.
Placements are typically structured around a mix of shadowing, hands-on project work, and exposure to different teams, so students leave with a genuine sense of how a business operates rather than a single narrow task repeated all week. Astute reviews requests from local schools and colleges on a rolling basis throughout the academic year, and encourages early contact ahead of school holiday periods when demand for placements tends to be highest.
For more information, contact sbradshaw@astutepeople.co.uk.
About the Author
Lily’s favourite subject is art and she enjoys BMX racing outside of school. Her long-term ambition is to become a tattoo artist.