Student Skills Competition 2024

Schools can enter any many teams as they wish in either the Senior Category or the Junior Category. In the Senior Category teams of students from 4th, 5th, 6th Year are eligible while in the Junior Category teams of students from 1st, 2nd, 3rd Year Students are eligible. Teams should consist of no more than 5 no. Students.

Students are challenged to market/advertise different jobs in their choice of sector – either the Construction Sector or the Transport & Logistics Sector – to their peers so that their peers would consider working in that job or that sector.

There are 2 parts to the competition, both of which the student team must complete and submit their entry to the Council.

1. Research Paper

The team must find out what kind of jobs the sector they have chosen offers. The team must identify and research a minimum of 5 different jobs in the sector and write up a paper showing how they approach the research (methodology) and what they learned about the sector and the jobs that they have selected. It is up to the team how to divide up the work on the research and on the Marketing/Advertising part of the entry.

The team is limited to a paper of 10 no. A4 pages on the research and 1 no. additional A4 page for a team biography which should tell the Council about their team and what work each team member did on the entry. Acknowledgements to helpful teachers, parents, family and friends who may have helped the team connect with companies in the chosen sector or assisted in any way are allowed if the team wants to add a further acknowledgement page. Total of 12 no. A4 pages allowed.

2. Marketing/Advertising

The team must market/advertise the 5 different jobs that they selected to their peers in school, with the purpose of making other secondary students want to work in those jobs or in that sector. Teams are free to choose any method of marketing/advertising that they like and to use their imaginations. This is the team’s chance to get creative, go all out, the more innovative the team is the better! Teams are encouraged to explore the sector and market it in a way that appeals to them. The purpose of the competition is not to have students develop a professional recruitment campaign or a campaign targeted at college graduates, the purpose is to interest the students themselves in working in that sector and that should be the focus of this part of the competition. The marketing/advertising submissions can be in any form the team wants i.e. a Print Advertisement, a Video; Tiktok; Podcastor any other social media medium the team likes but any videos etc. must be no more than 5 minutes in length.

All the work!

The team must work together to complete both elements of the competition. The team must research jobs in the sector they choose, actively engaging with companies in that sector is encouraged. The team must write up the jobs and their approach and prepare a team biography as part of the competition entry. The team must market/advertise the jobs they selected to their peers in secondary school and prepare marketing/advertising material for evaluation. The best material will be promoted by the Council as part of the Fingal Skills Strategy and the Xplore Your Future Expo.

The team must submit their research paper and their marketing/advertising materials to their teacher for review and the teacher will then in turn upload to Fingal County Council from the school Google Drive Account.

If entering videos, the video should ideally be no longer than 3 minutes in length and no higher resolution than “HD”.  Podcasts should be a maximum of 5 minutes in length.

The Council will evaluate the entries from all the schools and invite the top 3 teams in both the Senior and Junior Categories and their teacher(s) to the Local Enterprise Office – Student Enterprise Awards which are scheduled to be held on Thursday the 13th March 2025 (Venue TBC).  The winners of 1st, 2nd and 3rd places in the Senior and Junior Categories will be announced on the night and teams will be presented with their prizes. 

Winning entries will be promoted on Fingal County Council’s social media platforms and

in the run-up to the 2025 Xplore Your Future Expo, with videos displayed at the Expo.

After the Awards Ceremony the Council will liaise with the schools of the winning teams to create a video about their experience of the competition and what they learned.

The Council also hope to do Vox-pops at the winning schools, with the school’s permission, to find out what students thought of the entries, whether they learnt anything from the entries and whether the entries influenced students to consider working in those sectors.

For the School:

In the Senior Category and in the Junior Category, the top 3 schools in each Category will win One-For-All Vouchers for the school

• 1st Prize €500
• 2nd Prize €300
• 3rd Prize €200

For the Student Team (5 students per team):

In the Senior Category and in the Junior Category, each of the students in the top 3 teams in each Category will individually win a €50 One-For-All Voucher for themselves – 5 students per team, overall a single team wins €250 for their own use in addition to the prize money awarded to the school.