Oliver Pickup is "human-work-evolution storyteller", and an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the Financial Times, Guardian, Telegraph and Times, and many more publications, across more than 20 years. He is also a father of two school-aged children – and that, more than his bylines, is why he speaks in schools.
His flagship talk confronts the question hanging over every classroom: what happens to young people's careers in the age of AI? UK graduate vacancies have suffered a record-breaking collapse – down more than 40% in a year – and the number of young people not in education, employment or training has passed one million for the first time. Oliver gives students the honest picture, then the hopeful one: the first rung of the ladder is changing, not disappearing, and the students who understand which skills are rising in value will be the ones shaping what comes next.
Those skills are the heart of his Seven Cs framework: collaboration, communication, compassion, courage, creativity, critical thinking and curiosity – the capabilities no algorithm can replicate. As economist Minouche Shafik puts it: "Jobs used to be about muscle, then brains; in the future they will be about the heart." Communication is already the most in-demand skill among employers for the second year running, and Oliver shows students how to develop it – along with the other six – in ways they can start using immediately.
For younger students and parent evenings, his "feeds and the feels" talk covers life online: friendship, attention, loneliness and mental health. Nearly every teenager uses social media and around a third report being on it almost constantly; Oliver has the conversation most adults never quite manage, honestly and without lecturing.
He knows how to hold a room at any age. At Prendergast Ladywell Primary, he spent two consecutive years with the same cohort – first on careers, then helping the children produce a school newspaper reporting on a real local campaign. At Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich, his sessions on routes into journalism helped several students on to journalism degrees. Teachers describe his pitch as "perfect – warm, funny and honest, without ever talking down to his audience".
Oliver offers assemblies, careers talks, PHSCE sessions, writing and journalism workshops, sixth-form lectures, parent evenings and teacher CPD, tailored to every school. He believes every young person has more potential than they realise – and his job is to prove it to them.
London
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