Work experience: What are we really looking for?

A parent once told me about the scramble to find a placement for his daughter. She wanted to explore teaching, but a suitable placement wasn’t appearing.

Living in Tasmania, they had family connections in the salmon industry and to a related research organisation. Dad was relieved when he found out this company were happy to offer her a placement, and the problem was solved.

At least, the problem of finding a placement was solved.

It made practical sense. It simply hadn’t been chosen because the work itself appealed to her and her interests. It was the door that happened to be open.

Now, I don’t know how it went. She may have had an excellent week. She could have met interesting people, learnt something about working life or discovered an unexpected interest in the fishing industry. There’s nearly always something to be learned if your mind is open, and a week of work is a good thing to do.

Available is not the same as aligned

True. But good for what exactly?

If the aim is to practise arriving on time, communicating with adults and adapting to a workplace, almost any placement could tick the box. If the aim is to help a young person to understand the day-to-day work in a particular area, the work activities they encounter matter.

A placement far removed from their interests may give them some useful experience. It may still tell them very little about the kind of work they could find motivating.

Unpacking interests

When looking for work experience, rather than starting from the job title, understanding what interests the young person about the work done in a named job helps us identify other possibilities if a placement isn’t easy to find. For this daughter, corporate training, community workshops or even coaching could provide an experience of teaching beyond the obvious primary school setting.

Let’s take another example of Sam, who was interested in becoming an arborist – you know, those guys who climb trees to crazy heights and chop them down. What appealed to Sam was the outdoor, environmental work – and the energy and adventure of it. That’s the sort of work you’ll find in the ‘Environment’ work domain.

Sam’s mentor felt that work experience where trees were falling to earth might be hard to get – there were certain skills required - and not just a few insurance details to cover! But they did know someone who knew someone who could get Sam a placement in the office of an arborist business.

On paper, it sounds great. Sam would be working for a tree-felling company. A ‘foot in the door’ as they say.

But the work was as far away from clambering up trees and the outdoor work activities Sam was interested in as you could get. He watched the receptionist answer phones (and was allowed to answer some calls himself), filed invoices, and tracked customer requests in their new management app. He tried his best, but it was hard to stay engaged with work that really wasn’t his thing.

In our Work Sync map, the work activities Sam was experiencing are typical of those found in the work domain of ‘Workplace Administration’. And whilst they’re useful skills, they offered Sam very little exposure to the outdoor, physical environmental work that Sam is keen to experience.

Of course, that didn’t make the office placement worthless. Sam may have learned something, but in fact, his key takeaway was that there was no way he ever wanted to work in an office.

Sam’s story reminds us that when thinking about work experience placements, what the organisation itself does is far less relevant than the work activities the young person would be doing in it.

Let the activities guide the search

If we start by knowing the young person’s interests in particular work activities and environments, helping to find work experience begins differently. Instead of asking “Who do we know in that industry?”, we might ask “Where do we have connections to the type of work being done in the job that’s of interest?”

In Sam’s case, a parent or mentor who doesn’t have connections to an arborist might know someone with connections to a plant nursery, or a landscaping business – work environments where the activities would have been more aligned with Sam’s interests in the Environment work domain. For Sam, being able to gain experience in something aligned with his interests would have been much more likely to have held his attention, and built skills relevant to where he wants to go in the future – even if this was on the ground instead of up a tree.

Of course, finding a placement can still be tricky, even when we have a clearer idea of where to look. But starting by thinking about the work activities and environments that are of interest opens our minds to work experience opportunities that are aligned – not just available.

So how do you identify those interests and recognise other work activities that connect with them? Glad you asked!

Our Work Sync discovery process helps young people recognise the work activities that interest them and see where those interests could lead. With that understanding, a parent, teacher or mentor can help look for placements that offer a chance to experience those activities, including in workplaces they might never have considered.

And isn’t that what we’re really looking for? A chance for a young person to try work that interests them and come away with a clearer idea of what they’d like to explore next. For Sam, a few new ideas and a bit of dirt on his boots would be a pretty good start.