Work experience doesn’t work ❌
"Can you look after X's nephew for 5 days please, he is doing work experience?"
"Hmmm... I guess" 😦
Almost everything about traditional work experience is broken. Here's why...
Student Selection: Being related to someone important or a fleeting interest in a sector is not enough to justify the effort required from employees.
5 Days is Too Long: The learning curve for students drops dramatically after day 1. As does the quality of the ideas for what to do with them.
Wrong Age: Early exposure to careers is vital to break down stereotypes. Let's do this at scale in schools and save 1:1 workplace experiences for 16+.
Wrong Responsibilities: Schools can't know the breadth of opportunities available to their students. Business needs to fix careers education.
Once-in-a-Lifetime (if you're lucky): You get one opportunity to try out a workplace before you leave school (many get zero). How does this help?
We need to find a better way of doing this. To build a community-led model where its easy for purpose-led employees to take ownership for their local young people. Where technology does the heavy lifting and it becomes a way to hire the best local talent, from all backgrounds. This is why we created Not Impossible.
#NotImpossible #SocialMobility #WorkExperienceReimagined