Of ALL the activities you can choose to participate in at high school – Work Placements* are the #bees_knees!
*Work Placements include: Work Experience, Structured Work Placement or Volunteering / Community work....
This is the one proper way to #try-on different careers to find out what suits you. It doesn’t matter whether it is a GOOD, MEDIOCRE, or BAD experience… all of them will help shape your career thinking.
A GOOD experience means that you are (possibly) on the right track. A MEDIOCRE experience means that you have (possibly) gained worthwhile skills to take away with you. A BAD experience (possibly) means that you have to rethink your direction.
The big-fat-nervous-WHY…
A lot of my students struggle with the work experience WHY.
WHY should I do it?
Then they struggle with the NERVES.
You want me to what? TALK to an employer? NO WAY!
The WHY and the NERVES are huge obstacles for many of my students.
Sure, many students are happy to go to a placement if someone else does all the hard work (organising the placement).
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There are those who still don’t want to go, no matter who organises their placement.
Others will shuffle along pretending that the Career Practitioner is surely NOT talking to them!
Are you Talking to me?
Really? Me?
Closest to the real thing…
I am a proponent (supporter) of allowing students to organise their own placement – however, I do have the luck that our College has a flexible work experience program – which allows my students the time to overcome their nerves.
I know many Schools are locked into a timeframe for Work Experience and will end up organising placements for the majority of their students to meet deadlines – this is not a BAD thing – but it is still not a FULL experience for the student/s.
Why?
Because organising a placement is the closest thing to real job seeking that the student will ever-ever-ever experience!
I like to think of it in this way:
Good bike rider? Plenty of practice!
Plenty of practice? The better you get!
Same goes for organising placements!
Student, Ask yourself…
Will my attitude towards placements (or lack of) have an impact on me in the future?
I 100% need to be curious about this!
Is the NOW Me affecting the FUTURE Me?
Teacher Gift:
To help students explore their WHY for doing a placement, I have created a worksheet. Some answers are a little tongue in cheek, but the conversations from the results could be valuable. A Career Lesson in WEE – Why experience Experience?
The Processes
I am not going to go into detail about the processes for Work Experience, that is the job of the Careers Practitioner at your school (or whoever it is that helps you with this).
However, I WILL say, that the processes (or steps) for organising a work (experience) placement may seem tedious (and possibly even boring for some), but the documents you have to sign and hand in are a legal requirement and safe@work activities are designed to keep you safe in the workplace. End of story!
The Paperwork
You can find all the documents and information you need about placements at the Victorian Department of Education and Training Website. (DEET)
LOOKING right: The picture (to your right) shows what you need to look for on the DEET site (it will be located on the left of the screen).
