I’ve been invited to the Birmingham Young Professional of the Year (BYPY) awards dinner. I know. I’m not young. Or professional. Or, um, a year.

This rare occurrence – the last time I remember being invited to something, I’m pretty sure the dessert course was “wibbly wobbly jelly and ice cream” – got me thinking.

About dieting in time for the dinner-suited event mainly, but also about what it was like to start out in the professional world.

Generally, it was pretty hideous. Up until the point you arrived for your first day at work, your prior exposure to groups of sour-faced adults clad in suits would’ve been at funerals.

Then, you would be introduced to an endless conveyor belt of people whose names you honestly believed you would never remember.

Most of those people conveyed the air of impregnable confidence in every word they uttered.

Some demonstrated this confidence by using an authoritative ‘work voice’ so deafeningly assertive, you spent your first evening at home weeping, while stitching back together your own eardrum.

Like I said, it was hideous. There was a saving grace though, and the unexpected dinner invite reminded me of it. That saving grace was the support of Birmingham’s young business community and it’s this community that represents one of the city’s most attractive USPs.

This city is really conducive for doing business in, especially if you’re in the fledgling stage of your career. Birmingham’s main business area, centred in the Colmore Business District, has always been relatively compact but provides enough variety in terms of engaging meeting points for young professionals.

The city’s propensity for self-deprecation helps too, despite being regularly cited as one of the city’s main personality failings; unpretentiousness permeates through each formal event and informal gathering, meaning you rarely notice contemporaries giving it the big ‘I am’.

In Brum, young professional networking events are relaxed, people are good-natured and corporate aggression is frowned upon.

You don’t tend to get the ‘big fish in a small pool’ mentality here. Admittedly, that’s because young professionals here all universally feel like pondlife compared to their senior counterparts, but at least there’s a sense of equality.

Compare this to London, and its sprawling, impersonal world of corporate business, where career-clambering tyros are summarily chewed up and spat out more frequently than the gobbets of Sir Alex Ferguson’s chewing gum. They don’t network in London. They backstab (politely). They laugh (insincerely).

They drink (to forget the pervading feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and, on occasion, probably impotence).

I’ve always been complimentary about the networking scene in Brum, despite being current holder of the “World’s Worst Networker” title (if only networking could be judged by how many tempura prawns can be stuffed into one’s man mouth whilst trying to avoid engaging in proper conversation).

Ridiculously though, I remain surprised when I hear of young people being equally as laudatory.

Whenever I hear a city newcomer explain the ease of catching up with work contacts after 5pm, then being able to walk home to the Jewellery Quarter, it does make me think “this city really isn’t as bad as my missus says it is”.

I now work a good distance from the city centre, making it much harder to remain a part of the young networking scene (even harder now I realise I’m closer in age to Justin ‘Mr Tumble’ Fletcher than Justin Bieber).

Which is why, again, it’s impressive that Birmingham boasts events that reach out to even the most geographically-estranged professional – events such as BYPY.

If there is one gathering that proves the point about Brum being a great place to start a corporate career, then BYPY is it.

Whereas young corporate types are usually press-ganged into attending stuffy soirees with their beady-eyed directors and partners monitoring every single slurp of Soave, BYPY is different.

We’re not talking “Corporates Uncovered”, but it does represent a light-hearted chance to engage with your peers.

You’re also reminded of the true value of these networking events.

Not simply in the traditional business card exchange, or even in the building of strong friendships that lead to business opportunities in the long term.

Events like BYPY are beginning to change the one aspect of Brum’s professional scene that’s always rankled with me – and it’s that of inclusion.

Although the young professional scene in Birmingham has always been a welcoming one, lack of diversity remains an issue as it is throughout the local corporate sector.

What has been enormously encouraging in recent times is that BYPY’s leading lights (organisers Birmingham Future and the event’s winners and nominees) have used their roles to improve links with hitherto neglected young people – young people who could represent the next generation of business leaders.

So, when you watch the upcoming Apprentice CV episode, where Lord Sugar’s terrifying abrupt henchman Claude Littner is bound to get his claws into Nick Holzherr, and make a tiresomely disparaging comment about Nick’s BYPY Entrepreneur award (“Birmingham Young Professional of the Year?

I hadn’t realised the concept of professionalism had even reached Birmingham” etc) remember this: Claude’s too old to fully appreciate how excellent our city’s young professional network really is.

That said, I fear a post-BYPY, Friday morning hangover will alert me to the fact that Claude’s not the only one who’s too old for this kind of thing.

* Keith Gabriel is a Birmingham PR professional

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