1

Hey,

We are currently readying a project for next year re work experience guys and gals to come in to our business and spend half a day with each dept.

I’ve been tasked with getting some details ready for 2 people to come in for half a day and t give them a task or tasks but not sure what I can give them to do in half a day.

Anyone else been in this situation or can offer advice?

cheers

20 Spice ups
2

I taught the kid who came here how to reinstall Windows and Mac’s.

4 Spice ups
3

When I’ve had work experience people in the past, I’ve given them the generic rebuild tasks, asked them to create a small local network so they can understand the process and shown them general tasks to cover in the future such as checking backups, services and various other things. Just give them the tasks of a 1st level support guy, often they flourish and they’ll know what to expect.

2 Spice ups
4

I put my high school interns on the job imaging Windows 10 machines, along with hardware upgrades if needed. They had machines ready to go the first day, only 4 hrs including HR orientation. Deploying to a desk is a little much to ask in a half-day, learning to work with users takes longer :wink:

3 Spice ups
5

Have any cable management needing done? Not super technical and fairly easy after a few minutes of showing someone how you want it done.
Inventory needing updating?

2 Spice ups
6

@jeffreyw6336 ​ yeah our network admin is particularly fastidious re the cable management :slight_smile:

1 Spice up
7

We’ve never had any people like this offered to our IT staff. General purpose gophers.

I would have them help with any hardware cleanup. There’s always a pile of stuff that needs cataloging and other stuff that needs to be decommissioned and things like that. The main thing is to have them dealing with benign hardware. Not much damage to be done and minimal supervision required.

1 Spice up
8

Make them go over documentation to see if it makes any sense.

1 Spice up
9

Uh, you would let them at an IDF? Surely not your server room!

Yeah, no, I wouldn’t do that.

3 Spice ups
10

i do this with high school kids twice a year. i start them with installing a ssd and reimaging with pxe, then show them our work order and documentation system, then move to the fun of scripting and mass software and update deployment.

The focus i have is

-for them to understand the differences between 1 to 1 support and 1 to many support in an enterprise environment

-understand documentation and consistant procedures

-see that tech support is not related to gaming or programming

-understand that the main criteria is not knowledge but problem solving skills.

6 Spice ups
11

In the short time I had a minion I had him try to follow my documentation for some basic tasks like workstation setup.

1 Spice up
12

First year, we had them scan paper contracts to PDF, then upload to our SharePoint intranet. Second year, we had them help with modifications to the Intrenet site, html, etc. But they were early college level interns, the second was a computer science major.

13

Install an operating system. how to identify cables? how to check if cables are tight?

1 Spice up
14

and check that the cables are securely connected at BOTH ends.

1 Spice up
15

As someone who has had to supervise Work experience staff and had to organise for my own kids, there are a couple of things I can suggest.

  1. have a number of jobs lined up, but don’t expect any of them to be completed. Some WE kids are champing at the bit and will bolt through it quickly, others are happy to just plod. Try to have a variety of jobs, so they can get a feel for the organisation.

  2. Jobs like rebuilding of machines, sorting of returned equipment, imaging of drives are easy enough to handball. I have, in the past, given them a large box of keyboards, a PC and told them to try each keyboard, test all the keys, clean any that are reusable and dispose of the junk. Amazing how often a drowned keyboard gets thrown in the box and is useless but does not get thrown out. Same for stored laptops.

  3. Get them to shadow a help desk tech for an hour. Don’t make them sit there all day, but an hour should be long enough to get the gist of the HD tech’s job at least from the customer service side.

  4. Documentation of stored equipment.

  5. If you really want to make use of their time, get them to shadow someone and get them to write up some documentation on how the technician does their job. This can be used as the basis for introduction notes when a new starter comes on board.

Above all, answer their questions, give them tasks, a deadline and let them get on with it. Be prepared to step in if they need assistance. You would be surprised how many kids are so used to being guided by teachers, that they don’t get the concept of being responsible for getting their work done.

3 Spice ups
16

get them onto basic stuff if you can, or come up with an agenda of things to go through, or even just have them shadow you on jobs.

17

Half a day is not enough time to do anything useful. Have them spend 60 minutes with one person in each section explaining what their role involves, so a bit of networks, a bit of Servers, a bit of Security,etc - that way they’ll gain an understanding of the different part of IT.

If the department is too small for this, just have then shadow someone, you have enough time to get something interesting arranged for that day.

1 Spice up
18

I have recently had a work experience student for a couple of days (the youngest of one of our directors) and I got them doing a variety of bits and pieces and also tried to store a few bits up for them to look at. Some of it was just getting all the spare laptops out and ensuring they were all up to date and doing some builds up to showing them some of the admin tasks I was doing and trying to give some insight into how personal computing is different to business

19

Imaging is a great option if you have the available space and you actually have devices that need imaged. I’ve had days where I spend a couple of hours setting up a 24 port plug-n-play switch, running cables and setting up 24 laptops to be imaged. Start imaging them at the end of the day and let them run over night. The next morning, finish that batch up, and start hooking up a new batch. If you have problems, toss the trouble devices aside and deal with them later.

Cable runs are another good option, even if you have unskilled individuals, its nice to have somebody hold your ladder for safety.

If there’s absolutely nothing else, I think organizing network cable is a great use of time. I keep ours separated into three primary groups: <5’, 5’-15’, and 15’+
These groups make it super easy to find appropriate cables for common tasks: Group 1 is desk setups and patch cables. Group 2 is for various cable runs in a room. And group 3 is for long cable runs.

1 Spice up
20

Keyboards always need cleaning!

1 Spice up