Leading the way in virtual work experience
With school pupils unable to get work experience during the Covid-19, one firm of architects is letting them do it online.
Work experience is generally accept to be a potentially formative time for school pupils, faced with important decisions about future career choices. However, it is one of the many valuable things that most young people have lost since the pandemic spread.
Most, but not all, because some companies are offering virtual work experience.
For example, last month Amey (a leading infrastructure services and engineering company in the UK), delivered a virtual work experience programme for 24 students across the UK to provide an insight into its Highways business.
For three days, the students aged between 14 and 18 worked with Amey contract teams in Staffordshire, Sheffield Streets Ahead and Kent to find out what they do and the different roles on each contract, touching on everyday maintenance, scheme works and innovations.
Students were split into teams and across the three days were tasked with reviewing the Sheffield Streets Ahead winter service and reporting back with suggestions on how to improve four areas: finance, health & safety, environment and communications. On the final afternoon each team was given the opportunity to present their ideas to an Amey panel.
To guide the students, 20 staff from across the Amey contracts gave talks on each topic and dropped into the breakout groups to offer support.
The students were also taught presentation skills ahead of presenting to the Amey panel.
One of the students commented: “The experience was excellent, and my honest opinion was I thought this experience was going to be so boring as it was online. But you did the impossible and you made this experience so interactive and taught us so much that will hopefully help us in the future.”
The students were also offered careers guidance, with sessions including CV writing and interview practice.