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Hi everyone,

Long story short, I’ve been told I’ve got an apprentice to look after that starts next week. I’ve been asked to occupy their time for 4 months and give them a general overview of an IT department. We’re only a small team and I don’t really want them to be bored out of their minds. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can give them that would be remotely interesting to a 17 year old?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

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P.S. I’ve got no idea if they are at all interested in IT as a career. Their apprenticeship will take them around all departments in the business.

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Reddit.

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Depends what kind of apprentice and what they like to do. I would take a bunch of old parts and have them put together a PC, that’s a little hands on. Load different OS’s… have them play around with each one to accomplish similar tasks. If they like things like puzzles, basic command line and programming is fun too when you keep it very simple. If you have any old broken tablets or laptops, having them pull it apart and put it back together without breaking them (despite them already being broken) might be enjoyable.

Basic routing with a wireless router could be good too. Show them a basic wireless setup, have them change all of the wireless information. Maybe block certain websites like facebook, etc. and have them figure out how to unblock them again. I dunno… when I was 17 I was writing webpages in HTML… I dunno what would be interesting to a kid.

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You got old test stuff lying around? Have him build a network.
Send them to the crankiest user, learn customer service and build some character at the same time.
Coffee runs?
Give em a book?
Shadowing tends to work out some, is a little awkward for the end user though.

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There’s always inventory to do, processes to type up, manuals to update … give them a feel for how the life really goes! Maybe you can also have them encounter a C-level ticket with something along the lines of “Ever since you messed with our server, I can’t get to my internet from microsoft. You need to put the blue E back on my CPU five minutes ago.” If they can explain it such that the exec understands it and keep a straight face, they were born for this!

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Isn’t that a little young for presumably the owner to be grooming their kid to take over?

Set them in a corner with a stick. And an extra-long iPhone charging cable and let them facebook all day.

Otherwise, see if anything sparks their interest in the first 2-3 days and give them little projects based off of it. I would have loved to take a bare server, set up a RAID, install a server OS and try to create a domain when I was 17. But I’m weird and majored in math, so YMMV.

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Heck, I do this when a laptop or desktop breaks due to hardware failure. I strip it down for spare parts, but take the CPU as a trophy. Currently have a desktop Pentium, and laptop i5 and i7.

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Inventory, and yearly desktop replacement would be a good start.

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Tell him to find the cable stretcher…that’ll keep him busy for a while

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take apart the workstation he is supposed to use once he starts and make him build it and then install the OS and all applications that are needed. that should be a good first day.

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As someone who was a school-based IT trainee from 15, show them every aspect of what you do (within security limitations). But definitely start with hardware and software fundamentals, as suggested already.

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Have everything break down and let chaos ensue. I’m just kidding. But getting some feedback on what interests him and seeing if you can find a decent mix of what needs to be done and some things he wants to learn more about might be a good path to take.

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I like the idea of starting with a load of parts and getting them to build their machine, installing the OS etc.

Then maybe guiding them through setting up a small lab with a couple of switches and a VM host with some windows guests with some services.

Maybe to fill up some time, I’ll break what they’ve set up before they arrive and see how they go about fixing it. Hopefully that will be interesting enough to keep them entertained for the duration!

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If all else fails, I’ll send them out to find a bucket of steam.

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FYI…, They come in spray cans now.

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I think you’re going to have to meet him/her first and try to figure out what his/her skill set is first. I see someone mentioned it was the owners kid? I must have missed that somewhere? I don’t see any need to build a computer unless that’s what you do. A waste of time in my opinion. Maybe have them load a few operating systems and update them properly with all the drivers and Windows updates. Add to the domain, add users to the box.

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I take my coffee black, Bob here is one cream two sugars, Linda is two creams one sugar.

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Just don’t ask Bill Clinton for help with this question. okay?

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1 Sort of done (had to reload a server that broke and I have turned desktops into temporary servers)

2 Messed with the raid settings to remove one disk

3 Done 100s of times

4 Done twice but never hooked real computers up to it only vms

Done by age 16. I am a few years older now.

I will post other ideas tomorrow.