Survive Your Work Placement

Work Placement (usually in Year10/11) can be quite a daunting prospect, even for the most confident of people. This is an article from someone who did theirs not long ago.

Steps

  1. Choose your placement. You should really try to organize it yourself. Speak to family members/ friends and see if their work place offers any work experience but make sure it's somewhere that you have a genuine interest in. Alternatively, your school should have a list of placements if you can't find one yourself. Make sure you choose your placement well in advance to avoid stress.
  2. Prepare appropriately. Once you have your desired placement start thinking about what clothes you will need to wear. If you're going to an office your best bet is a nice white shirt and black tie with black trousers. This wouldn't be appropriate for somewhere like a building site though. Make sure you fill out any required forms well in advance too. Also be sure to gather any contact information for your placement in case you cannot attend a day and for the next step...
  3. Contact your placement in the week leading up. Remind them about their agreement to take you on, thank them and let them know you are looking forward to working with them. This could be done by telephone or if you're not too confident, by letter or e-mail.
  4. Arrive promptly. There isn't much worse than arriving late on your first day! try to get an earlier bus/ train than you normally would have to and aim to get their 5 minutes early. If you're not sure about the location of your placement or how long it will take to get there, have a 'practice run' the week before. Breathe in and out and walk through the doors!
  5. Make a good first impression. Make eye contact, introduce yourself to your supervisor and colleagues and smile!
  6. Throw yourself in to everything. Don't whine or complain if they ask you to do something you don't want to do. Just do it and get on with it. You'll probably get the jobs that you're work mates simply hate doing, so what? You might actually enjoy them. Keep your head down and get on with it.
  7. Interact. Obviously it's totally understandable to be nervous on your first couple of days but try to speak to some of your colleagues. Don't gossip or offend anyone though! The last thing you want is tensions in your placement caused by 'the kid on work experience'. However if you fell ever uncomfortable, don't forget to just keep smiling.
  8. Thank your supervisor and colleagues. Buy them a nice card on your last day and ask them for feedback on how you did. Also try to stay in contact with the company, they may have Saturday jobs/ part time work to offer you if you made a good impression.

Tips

  • Get your schools contact info. Contact your school IMMEDIATELY if any problems arise in your placement. It very, very rarely happens but some people can be mistreated when on their placement. Make sure you let your school know immediately if you feel you are being bullied.
  • Don't be intimidated by the other workers, especially if you mess up when doing a job. Remember they're usually about 10 years or more older than you, and they don't expect you to be perfect.
  • Your placement knows their responsibility. They will NEVER ask you to do ANYTHING that could put you at risk, you won't be asked to do much that you didn't expect.

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