Gone are the days of easily gaining non-paid work experience. So much red-tape for businesses, their time = money so they just don’t want to deal with kids that need training (unless they are being paid in some form for their time = government trainee/apprenticeship grants).
So how are our poor kids supposed to gain any experience or try trades to see if it is something they want to invest their education in?
My son’s school requires the year 10’s to complete 1 weeks work experience as part of their education (minimum of 4 days). The school themselves were of no help and we spent weeks, countless calls and emails with knock back after knock back.
Finally we found him a placement with a local plumber and my son was over the moon. We had already enrolled him to start Trade School this July - so he saw this as a great opportunity to try the plumbing trade to see if it was for him.
Day 3 he comes home happy again! He is loving the experience….. however that all changed when we received a call from the school advising that he has been asked not to return as he is of no use to them as he doesn’t even know the basics! He was asked to bring in a certain tool from the car and returned with the wrong tool and so on. He was also unable to complete simple Plumbing tasks and had to be shown how.
My husband went down to speak to the business owner (tradie to tradie) and the boss started comparing my son (15 with no experience) to their 16 year old apprentice. Saying this is what he is up against - this kid is great, knows his tools etc whereas my son knows nothing.
My husband pointed out that that wasn’t fair as the other kid had 12 months experience and TAFE training and that our son has no experience at all and he wasn’t paying him (no reason to complain about lack of ability to complete tasks).
We have contacted the school and now he cannot pass the unit unless he obtains another week (min 4 days) unpaid work experience or he completes a whole theory module in 2 days that the kids at the school (who couldn’t get work experience) have had all week to do.
Our son feels like he is a failure and all confidence he started the week with has been completely drained from him.
How are we supposed to help our son gain experience and be “employable” when things like this happen?
We feel utterly useless and like we have somehow failed him - as a business that wasn’t even paying him said he doesn’t have enough experIence to be useful to them.
How are we, as parents supposed to make our kids knowledgeable enough to even gain unpaid experience unless we work in that trade ourselves?
I’m now up at 2:30am stressing and worrying that my child is going to be forever unemployable and its making me sick to my stomach.
Any advice from teen mums and helping their kids achieve real world/work experience and giving their kids the best foot forward would be greatly appreciated.
# As a side note, I’m actually hosting one of the schools students myself in my own business. And yes its time consuming showing them absolutely everything (as they have no experience at all) but I accepted the task! I am responsible to give this child “work-experience” and that is what I’m doing. I’m not sending her back because she doesn’t know any of the software I use, know how to calculate wages or even when a financial year begins…
19 Replies
If work experience is mandatory to complete this unit, his school definitely should be assisting with finding a placement!
That's what happened when I was in grade 10, we gave a few preferences and our school made the arrangements (we did have the option to arrange our own work experience if we wanted or if our preferences were a bit niche).
I can understand it from a business perspective as well though.
It's a massive liability having an untrained, inexperienced teenager at a worksite (my brother is a brickie and they don't take work experience kids for this very reason).
There is also a lot of nepotism in trades, 9 times out of 10 the apprentice is related to the boss but they're given first dibs on the apprenticeship even if they're useless as tits on a bull. (Same brother basically had to beg several businesses for his apprenticeship, he was quite lucky to find one that took a chance on him).
It was the same when I was trying to break into the hairdressing industry.
He's had a small setback, he isn't doomed to a lifetime of unemployment. Realistically, two weeks of high school work experience isn't going to make or break any future career.
This just wasn't the right business for him.
My advice would be to have him attend some TAFE taster days if he's keen to pursue a trade. But it's also completely okay if he doesn't have it all figured out right now, he's only 15!
Worst case scenario, bring him to work with you so he gets a grade on this module.
Office work exp is a bit different to the responsibility of having an inexperienced teenager on site with tradies stretched to limit and all kinds of dangerous obstacles around.
We are a trade business and as much as we would love to pay it forward, its go go go at the moment, clients want their projects completed.
In a few years time we won’t have many tradies around with lack of apprentices, but honestly inexperienced guys now are really inexperienced and hard work on the boys.
If he really wants to be a plumber may be get him to work in the wholesalers so he has a heads up on parts/equipment/tools get him to go from there, make connections with the guys that come in.
He will be a rare breed in 6 years time, world will be his oyster.
Agree its totally different and why a lot of tradies wont take work experience kids. But don’t agree to take them in the first place would be the correct first step. Not do what they have done.
If your husband is a tradie, surely he has connections? My husband is a tradie... having someone on site with no knowledge is beyond a small inconvenience. Get an extension on the theoretical assignment if you can't get another placement
Not necessarily.
My partner is a panel beater. He knows other panel beaters, painters, a couple of mechanics and a glass guy for windscreens but he's back with us plebs when it comes to standard electricians, builders, plumbers etc. Networking is all pretty in house.
Exactly. Not all tradies know other (have contacts with) tradies in different trades
I'd be ropeable.
Why couldn't they have simply put him with the 16 year old apprentice to watch and complete small tasks with the apprentice checking or finishing anything he didn't have the skills to finish. If he wasn't there they'd be fetching their own f##king tools so all they needed to do was take him along, not try to use him as free labour.
Do you have a Tradelink shop nearby? Maybe he could segway across to plumbing retail to finish the placement.
And I'd be dogging the hell out of that business. What a scummy thing to do to a kid.
Hug your boy, tell him he's plenty good enough and that sometimes you just come across assholes that forget they had to start somewhere too.
Because if OPs son hurt himself under the supervision of a 16 year old apprentice, it'd open them up for a massive lawsuit.
Also, suggesting OP run this business down simply because they chose to end the work experience early is an awful thing to do. It's a business not a free training program or a charity!
What if the WE really didn’t know anything and had to have a set of eyes on him at all times.
What if there was a legitimate reason for him not to continue to be on site.
The people paying for the project don't want mistakes because everyone has to look out for the safety of someone not able to look out for themselves.
Then I guess they shouldn’t have agreed to the work experience placement in the first place if they didn’t have ability to do this.
That's what safety inductions are for.
Publicly dogging this business is poor form. Times are tough for business owners!
They most definitely shouldn't have committed if they didn't think they could see it through but it really doesn't sound like they set out to deliberately screw the kid over.
Agree publicly dogging the business would be uncalled for. I don’t think the OP was asking if she should take action against the plumber in any form.
OP was asking how her kid can even gain enough knowledge to even be able to gain unpaid work experience.
That was more directed at this commenter who implied that dogging was the approach OP should take.
Fully appreciate OP and her son's struggle though, it is a lot tougher for modern kids to break into the work force and the expectations of prior experience is a bit ridiculous. Once upon a time any teenager who was willing to work could get a fair go but now it's hard to even get entry level jobs without having 2 years experience!
Hopefully her son can pick himself up, dust off and keep trying.
I implied nothing of the sort. I clearly said I would, not she should.
So your position is that it's OK to ruin someone's business because they hurt your feelings by trying to help and realising after 3 days that it was impacting on their livelihood? Sometimes the right decision is hard. At least this employer was willing to try
Absolutely unfair on him and my heart goes out to you. It seems all round there's just no suppprt and the schools reaction to this is extremely disappointing. The whole point of work experience is to get EXPERIENCE.
also the plumber sounds like a dick.
I've had work experience kid come into my business so I understand what it's like, but it's really not that hard and it sounds like the plumber wanted free labour when really your son just needed to tag along.
Could he do the 4 days with you? (Or you just sign off on it) or with your husband? Or a friend or family member? As long as the paper work is filled in the school doesn't need to know the nitty gritty.
And don't stress too much about his future. I have 2 sons so have definitely been in your position of wondering if they will ever get jobs. Your son is definitely not unemployable because of a 3 day work experience with a rude plumber.
I know his confidence must have taken a dive though but he will get through it. Does he have a part time job? If not start there to get his confidence up. Or look at some courses in your area, even something like a first aid course is beneficial on his resume. Still do the trade course- it will be great for him and help him alot in finding an apprenticeship
There will be plenty of opportunities for him, he is young and just starting out and don't let this silly man define what kind of man your son is.
This sounds like my son's school! Completely useless and incapable of helping students.
I'm not much help as my son in yr10 didn't have to do this as he's staying on to yr12 whereas those leaving needed to do it.
Approach the local TAFE many trade teachers are business owners or have connections, explain the situation and see if they can help.
Otherwise I'd let him do the theory and ask he brings it home and I'd do it for him. Yep wrong I know but my son won't fail because the school is unwilling to assist.
'Back in the day' the school had a list of local employers and they'd allocat a student to employer based on the students preference of career.
Sorry you're going through this it's a tough situation.
People don't have patience, all about the $$. I honestly hate having to train people but we all have to start somewhere. In a few years these bosses will be crying no one wants to work and the rest of us too as there won't be enough people to fix stuff