A Guide to Work Experience - Snow Leopard

[Snow Leopard]

A Guide to Work Experience:
For most of you Year 9's, you're going to have to do a compulsory week of work experience in Year 10. Here is my little guide after having gone this process myself.

Disclaimer: These are just my thoughts and my experiences. Your experience might be different.

1. Start Early
I cannot emphasize this enough. Particularly if you want to find a work placement in a highly competitive environment such as a Hospital. You have to remember that many students are also in your position and if you don't start organising your work placement early, then someone else WILL take your potential spot. Furthermore, places like hospitals often require you to complete an application and that takes time to do, so you really shouldn't be finding a place to work experience at the last minute. On the other hand, if you're looking into doing work experience with somewhere like a primary school, then you probably don't need to organise it so early, but not too late either.

But how early, you ask me. I reckon around late October - November is a good time to organise/apply for work experience in a competitive place.

2. Use Work Exp. to Explore Potential Careers
Please don't be that kid that does work experience in Coles. Unless you believe that you'll be offered a job there after doing work experience with them,  then I personally think that it's a wasted opportunity. You should be using work experience to explore various careers and see what's it's actually like to work in "x" field or "y" job. You should essentially be using to "test the waters" and trial out different careers that you may be considering.

If you have no clue where to do work experience you should:
a) Identify what your interests are
b) find careers that embody your interests
c) start researching/applying/organizing work experience in those fields

3. Don't be Lazy about Contacting Businesses/Organisations
Organising work experience is really not as difficult or scary as you might think. It's not too late to find a good place to go to. An employee isn't going to bite your head off if you approach them about doing work experience as long as your polite and neatly - dressed (e.g: school - uniform). Whether you ring them or approach them in person depends on the place. If you live close to the place you might want to approach them in person. But, if you know that they're busy, or that they're far from where you live, you don't want to go there only to be told that it's their day off etc. In this case you should probably call them instead.

I think that at the end of the day this is YOUR work experience, if you're going to put it off, then you're not putting yourself in a good position. Organise it, and secure your place. Don't expect your career's co-coordinator to organise your work experience for you, that's not their job.

4. Use your Networks
Use the people that you know to help you find work experience. These might be your aunt, uncle, relatives, parents etc. For example, it's going to be a lot easier for your to get work experience in a hospital if your aunt works as a nurse there because she might be able to recommend you and give that extra reliability than other random people who walk in knowing/having no networks. Of course, I understand that not everyone will have contacts or people that they know to help them get a work experience placement. But if you do, then you should 100% be using them.

5. Polish up your Application and CV/Resume
When applying for a competitive work experience placement, you need to ensure that your CV and application are up to scratch. It is a good idea to have a fresh pair of eyes to check over what you've written to avoid grammatical errors and ensure that it reads well. In addition, you should aim to submit your applications as early as possible as the places for some places are seriously limited and fill up extremely quickly. It's also important to note that once an organisation has set a deadline for an application, they will not accept any more applications after that, so make sure that you are aware of the deadline. Another thing to keep in mind for a large organisation is that some organisations won't have time to tell each individual applicant why they weren't selected. Most will send an e-mail saying whether or not you got accepted  but they're unlikely to provide more information other than the fact that you'd be able to apply the following year (if their work experience program is for other Year Levels as well).

6. Don't Give Up
You might find it difficult to organise work experience, but you should never give up. Keep on persevering, contacting different businesses/organisations and if you're still having trouble finding a place, then your work experience co-coordinators should be willing to help you given that you've made a valid attempt to organise your work experience yourself.

I hope that this is useful and doesn't just sound like me rambling. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Good luck with finding your Work Experience Placement

EDIT: Minor spelling errors

[Joseph41]

Really fantastic work, Snow Leopard. For you personally, what were the most beneficial things about work experience?

I really agree with point #6. Finding a place can be difficult, and you may be rejected a bunch of times! Try not to take this personally - a lot of places don't accept work experience students, and many others only have limited places. Don't give up!

[Snow Leopard]

Really fantastic work, Snow Leopard. For you personally, what were the most beneficial things about work experience?

For me, I think I benefited most from the fact that it put me out of my comfort zone as I had to organize the placement myself. It also meant that I had to be self-reliant to ensure that I was getting there on time every day with a positive attitude.

[blueycan]

This is so great! I know I would have really appreciated this before my work experience placement 

[caffinatedloz]

Also, I would totally recommend trying out some different places if you can. I know some schools give their students two weeks of work experience so that they can try two businesses. Because I finish school in November, I'm lining up some work experience at a special needs school in December. Heaps of places also offer work experience on the school holidays, so that is another option if you can't narrow down what you want to do.

[Snow Leopard]

Just wanted to bump this thread to give the Year 9's on AN a friendly reminder that around this time of the year, you should really start thinking seriously about where you want to do work experience, especially if you want to complete it in places like hospitals or courts.

[blueycan]

Just wanted to bump this thread to give the Year 9's on AN a friendly reminder that around this time of the year, you should really start thinking seriously about where you want to do work experience, especially if you want to complete it in places like hospitals or courts.

Yepp
And a quick reminder from me, some places (Like the Victorian Bar and Headspace) require students to be over 16 years of age, so make sure you do your research and have some backup options just in case <3

[J_Rho]

This is great advice Snow Leopard! Just want to share a little story of my work experience that might help some students see the benefits of it.

I was super lucky and was able to do 2 weeks of work experience, I did 1 week in May at Lord Somers Camp and 1 week in July with Emergency Management Victoria.

My work experience at Lord Somers lasted a week, what I did ranged from taking kids open water canoeing, paddleboarding, hiking, raft building, hiking and team games as well as assisting kitchen staff at dinner time and supervising the kids that were doing clean up. The week that I did work experience there were no kids there on Monday so I spent the day touring the grounds as well as chatting with the camp manager about my interest in the industry as well as what I do outside of school and briefly met some of the camp leaders who came in around 5pm to unpack for the week. Camp came in on Tuesday and I was assigned a group alongside another leader and basically did everything a camp leader did, inclusive of the silly dances and songs in front of the kids and teachers and mucking around and laughing at their antics with them in the accommodation. I won’t go into too much more detail (you can PM me if you want deets) but by the end of the week the camp leader said to me “I’m really impressed with you, you’d make an awesome camp leader! I was so surprised you joined in their welcoming dance and introduction - the new hires are always skeptical about that but you just threw yourself in the deep end! I’d hire you if you lived closer!” and I contacted the manager a week or so ago asking for a job once I finish school and I got the most joyful and heartfelt reply saying yes. I believe this is because I stepped out of my comfort zone, when i was doing work experience I wasn’t trying to convince the manager i should get a job I just simply put myself out there and without meaning to, made an amazing impression on the manager which has gotten me a job there. My point is, everything good is outside your comfort zone, step out of it and take a chance!

I won’t really get into what I did at EMV as it was a lot of word processing such as writing draft proposals and proofreading strategic plans, the same thing happened at the state control centre, I was offered a summer job but I couldn’t take it up as I was in Year 10.

What I want those who read this to take away isn’t she just naturally gifted or people like her.
Both times I stepped outside of my comfort zone, and was eager to learn and even if you don’t see a career in what you might be doing work experience in...still put in the effort, be eager, because maybe one day you will want a job there. Think of work experience as networking because it will be so much easier to get a job somewhere where you have done work experience because they already know you! You’ve already got your foot in the door. If you don’t get to do work experience where you wanted to don’t give up hope, work experience can be done in Year 10, 11, 12 or even after high school! If you REALLY want to do work experience at a hospital, get in real early before others even consider it and if you don’t get it one year, try the next year.

TL;DR - Put in the effort, be eager, everything good is outside your comfort zone, step out of it and take a chance!