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Hello all,

So I work in a secondary school in the UK and we have a work experience student from the local college for 3 weeks… I am struggling to think of things to keep him entertained for the whole 3 weeks, has anyone been in a similar situation that could offer some advice or help?

Thank you

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Yes, many times.

Why not show him the helpdesk queue, get him to have a read through the tickets, see if he understands any of them?

Show him the servers, explain how it’s all put together then give him a simple project to cut his teeth on.

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thank you for your reply that is helpful, what kind of project would you recommend?

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Highly depends on the student and what they are capable of doing. Some of the student help we have had are very motivated and we can hand complex scripting projects. Others are not and giving them more than the basic break/fix queue is a waste of our time and theirs.

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Bingo. That’s why showing them the helpdesk queue and evaluating them is a key part of this. You’ll have one of three responses:

  1. They’ll sit their looking dumb. For this person I recommend a project making tea for the team and giving them some whiteboard time on why keeping quiet isn’t good.

  2. They’ll have a few comments but will be hesitant to step up and say something - for this person I’d recommend giving them a project around looking at helpdesk tickets and recommending three changes to make that’ll reduce the size of the ticket queue and make them present something - It’ll help them get some courage for a potential future IT career.

  3. The third type is the loudmouth know everything. For this person I’d suggest that you get them to suggest their own project and let them sink or swim, it’ll be invaluable experience for them and maybe they’ll learn that they aren’t quite as good as they think they are. Or maybe they are and you could get something quite useful out of them!

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I did work experience at my school for their IT Department and they had me converting tape media into MP3 and assisting in setup of PCs ready for examinations, and sending me out to classrooms to fix minor issues (Wireless mouse battery died/no display on projector). If they were as passionate about IT as I was, I’d be happy doing any job you assign no matter how menial it is. Hope that helps!

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Inventory is always an option.

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I am so against having them doing just menial tasks like inventory. Have them shadow a few people the first day in different departments. See if they find something they like. I try to dump as much knowledge as I can into them after those first few days.

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Agreed. They are a work experience student, not menial labour to do the jobs that no one else can be bothered to do.

Give them something useful, something meaningful.

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Have them tidy the IT room and make the tea :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’d ask them what they would like to get out of their time there with you and from there you can tailor a projector to their curiosity. It might be the only environment that they get exposed to with production IT equipment.

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If you can figure out his level of knowledge and experience, you can set him up for success. I think researching helped me the most in this career. Have him look up the latest cyber risks and send in a report or something simple like re-imagining a machine. We all started from the bottom and now we’re somewhere in between.

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I like to let the W.Ex students help with documentation. Methods of discovery, patch evaluation, etc. We usually spin up a few VM’s together and trace the process through so they understand. It needs to be interesting, engaging, and useful

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We had a college student for a week, I had him setup his own machine (format to windows 10, upgrade RAM, domain join and standard software installation).

He would follow/shadow me on any task I had to do.

Encouraged him to answer the phone and write down the issue then come up with fixes.

To be honest it seemed he had no interest in IT at all and just chose an “easy” job but hey hoh!

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Some thing as simply as monitoring them and telling them to click next when a prompt comes up makes them feel involved. The key is have them work with all ages of engineers and techs. A older engineer who has been doing this a long time more than likely will have issues with doing thing with out thinking. As they are use to doing it all the time. A younger person may not have that issue, but lacks the knowledge of say an older engineer.

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A good little “project” when I had one of these bugars in, assuming there is an actual interestm was cobbling a few old machines together, strip them and build them up whatever and creating a very basic network. If you have the hardware lying about it’s great. Another good little timekiller was making up and terminating RJ-45’s. Kept one of the little bugars busy all day trying to get one to work. Then he wanted to keep it afterwards (he was slightly odd). If they’ve no interest and are just there for a bit of an easy ride, get them untangling cables you’ll never need. Had some teachers use that as a detention before, kids hated it.

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When I was a student Intern in my Schools IT dept. I handled most of the helpdesk tickets that came through. Granted my supervisors trusted me more than most of the other kids that came through the program. I had access to our print server to help teachers with “stuck” print jobs. I had a pretty enjoyable experience working there; even if most of it was just busy work.

Some of the jobs I did:

Mount AP’s around the school.
Mount Security cameras
Projector mounts in classrooms / Conference rooms
Printer troubleshooting and repair.
Basic software troubleshooting
During the summer I had to re-Image all of the teacher laptops.
Help cleanup some of the IDF closets throughout the school.

Get a kid up on a ladder and He/She will probably have more fun then sitting behind a desk and doing busy work.
Before doing any of this absolutely evaluate the student and make sure that they are capable of doing these things and that you TRUST them not to unplug everything in the network closets…

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Not reallly sure what the term work experience means in the UK. We call them interns here in the US. Probablly the same thing.

Keeping these guys or gals occupied without giving them keys to the kingdom is the challenge. As many have already stated, documentation, inventory, storage room organization, wiping old machines, creating CAT 5e, 6 cables, handling of surplus equipment or any other tasks the IT staff doesn’t usually have tiime to accomplish.

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We have ours do basic computer maintenance. Check for updates, clear cache and cookies, run antivirus and malware programs, wipe down keyboards and screens in the computer labs, etc. If we have new machines, we have them assist in removing bloatware and installing the programs needed. It also helps to ask what area of IT they are interested in and try to gear that experience to their interest. :slight_smile:

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I did work experience for a factory making wings for aeroplanes! I was so so excited…but then literally all I did was shadow some people in an office and do health and safety talks. Completely put me off the job as it just made me feel like there was no passion or reason to work there.

Please do everything you can to show just how good a career in IT is, I promise it will have a huge impact on the kid’s life.*

*unless the work experience kid is rude. If they’re rude, please do everything you can to silence them!

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