Work experience

[Bufftailed]

DC year 12 has to do work experience in July. Has no idea what he wants to do really, has mentioned finance type roles. Thinking about Econ or languages at uni but fixed on nothing.

School made clear parents need to help DC find something. Have asked around a few people and drew a complete blank. Is it worth him writing to local finance companies to ask if he can go in for a week? Not really sure where to start. Worst case he might have to do online work experience with pre-recorded sessions, seems soul destroying..

Any advice appreciated.

It is hard for teens to find wk exp. But as he is 16/17 it might be less of an issue (wrt H&S concerns etc).

My advice when I was a form tutor and my year 10s had to do this:

• Ask family, neighbours, family friends, to see if anyone can help – eg runs their own accountancy business. It’s often who you know.
• Don’t write letters or email. My students would say "Miss I emailed and never heard back". Of course they didn't. He needs to phone.
• Use the internet to find the name of someone to call at the business and then ring up – at a sensible time of day (so not 9am Monday or 4.30pm Friday).
• Have a script and make sure it quickly includes briefly who he is (Hi there, my name is xx and I'm a year 12 pupil at YY school) and that he is looking for work exp – do they offer it?
• If they don't they can say so and you can tick that off and move on. If they do – he needs to have further questions such as how does he apply, what sort of thing might he be doing, is there someone specific he needs to talk to, does he need to have an interview?

He may well need to be super flexible. DD fancied work exp at a local theatre but was not picked (very popular role I suspect) so she ended up doing a week at the local library and a week in the drama dept at the school I worked in.

Work with him to write a list of all possible places – smaller firms or those that are privately owned may be better bets than big conglomerates. Then collect phone numbers and set aside a day and start calling. If that's at 4pm when he gets in from school that's fine. Or if he could make some calls in free periods maybe better. HTH.

Super helpful. Thank you. Will help him to crack on.

Mine did a week at a fast food restaurant (only as observer/helper) and the next year as teaching support in a primary school. She loved the latter and for the first time I found her motivated and happy to
’work’. Both these had nothing to do with her A level subjects or Uni course choices. At 16-17 you take whatever you can for no pay. It’s called ‘work experience’ but in reality they don’t get IT access or any access to ‘real’ data or work. It’s more like ‘shadowing a professional’ week rather than ‘work experience’. But at that age it’s eye opening.
Try via your friends/family and in-person is best if you get an option.

They could approach the local citizens advice bureau for work experience as part of their service offer is financial advice and guidance

Thanks. That is a good idea. I like the lateral thinking

Local council may offer work experience and would have finance dept.