Work experience for your kids

[anonymous-user]

Dear All

I have a bit of a mumsnet like dilemma. My son needs to take up work experience and wants to take on engineering, strategic research etc etc. He’s also considering banking but I don’t think he’s too keen on it.

Having talked to him about it he’s keen to take on something automotive (he’s mad about cars) or aerospace related, particularly defence. Considering he a has a picture of an Apache helicopter on his wall I get this viewpoint

I shortlisted some companies but a lot of them don’t seen economically viable:

Rolls Royce plc - excellent, but far too far.
Prodrive - maybe, but not sure
Volkswagen Group
Boeing Defence
BAE - too far
British Airways - not sure
JLR
Toyota/Lexus.

I’m based in the Watford area so anything past Oxfordshire is too far to travel north. C. London could be a nightmare...


If anyone could give me any suggestions, or where your kids went it would be extremely, extremely appreciated

TYIA

[anonymous-user]

PS: anything automotive round the Silverstone area that would have proper staff, i.e not a race paddock?

[randlemarcus]

Through school, or off your own bat? I know a fair few places wont touch placements unless they are via proper channels.

[jmorgan]

Tried where I used to work. elfnsafety said office work only, not at the coalface and under strict school/company interaction, paper work trail etc. etc. Must have targets and goals and so on.

Gave up.

[edc]

Ultra is near Greenford. Martin Baker Aerospace near Denham. There are some UTC/Goodrich sites near Hemel.

[Truffles]

If this is for a child still at school, it may be difficult. The school, and probably the "employer" has to conduct a health and safety audit, which tends to mean no tools.

When my daughter (who is now studying engineering at Uni) had to do this a few years ago she got a week in Waterstones. 5 days of sorting books on shelves for no pay. They didn't even give her a free book for her trouble when she left.

[Haltamer]

Ford!

Execllent placements, I've completed one myself at their Warley office:- Whilst I was on the IT Side of things, They still gave us a full tour of the facilities at Dunton, and I did get a good bit of experience.

It's a fair trek, but you can do it all in a waft around the M25, which isn't too bad for a week, or TFL Rail to Brentwood.

This was organised by myself in the Summer, so no need for School involvement.

[Strudul]

randlemarcus said:

Through school, or off your own bat? I know a fair few places wont touch placements unless they are via proper channels.

Should hope not as they're probably underage.

[Blakewater]

jmorgan said:

Tried where I used to work. elfnsafety said office work only, not at the coalface and under strict school/company interaction, paper work trail etc. etc. Must have targets and goals and so on.

Gave up.

When I was 15, in 2000, the school I was at organised work experience through local companies. Some people who were interested in law ended up washing the cars of solicitors for a fortnight but I ended up in the workshop of the local Jaguar dealer before spending a couple of days in the showroom at my own request. It was a Pendragon dealership.

They taught me some proper stuff about maintaining the cars and let me get hands on with them as well as taking me out for drives. It wouldn't surprise me if that's not allowed now.

[DrDeAtH]

Try Elstree aerodrome, there may be an aero engineering company located there, or within the vicinity..

[Jimi.K.]

I can't offer any help, but wish you luck OP.

When I was 15 the best I could get was a week in the administration office of a large bakery. It was the most soul destroying week of my life, manually entering hundreds of batch numbers from the delivery drivers into the antiquated computer system (this was 2004 and the computers looked like something out of 'war games').

To make things even more pointless, they were just about to introduce handheld scanners for the delivery drivers to use, making the manual entry system I was performing completely redundant. Bizzarely, the 6 full-time administrators there seemed thrilled that a new automated system was about to be introduced, seemingly unaware it was going to make them as redundant as the 1980's computers they were using!

[oldbanger]

I got a week in blackheath hospital. I had already been working in admin a couple of years at this point. It took me a day to clear the filing backlog after which they put me in housekeeping as they couldn’t think of anything else. I spent the rest of the week cleaning toilets.

[anonymous-user]

Truffles said:

If this is for a child still at school, it may be difficult. The school, and probably the "employer" has to conduct a health and safety audit, which tends to mean no tools.

When my daughter (who is now studying engineering at Uni) had to do this a few years ago she got a week in Waterstones. 5 days of sorting books on shelves for no pay. They didn't even give her a free book for her trouble when she left.

Just applied for the youth programme @ Rolls Royce. Will end up getting a hotel in Derby if he gets in.

It supposedly involves a week working on the Trent engines and helping out with R&D. I put him down for strategic research as well so that’s not too bad either I guess

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 22 April 19:27

[anonymous-user]

Haltamer said:

Ford!

Execllent placements, I've completed one myself at their Warley office:- Whilst I was on the IT Side of things, They still gave us a full tour of the facilities at Dunton, and I did get a good bit of experience.

It's a fair trek, but you can do it all in a waft around the M25, which isn't too bad for a week, or TFL Rail to Brentwood.

This was organised by myself in the Summer, so no need for School involvement.

Thanks, just put him down for Ford. Brentwood isn’t too far away, I’m used to the commute.

[Mound Dawg]

Blakewater said:

When I was 15, in 2000, the school I was at organised work experience through local companies. Some people who were interested in law ended up washing the cars of solicitors for a fortnight but I ended up in the workshop of the local Jaguar dealer before spending a couple of days in the showroom at my own request. It was a Pendragon dealership.

They taught me some proper stuff about maintaining the cars and let me get hands on with them as well as taking me out for drives. It wouldn't surprise me if that's not allowed now.

Despite being a st company to work for Pendragon were actually very good at the work experience thing. We used to get work ex kids in from the local comp at the Jeep Dealers I worked in and they were looked after really well.

[Cyder]

How about Nissan Technical Centre Europe in Cranfield, Beds? Not so far from Watford and contains all R+D functions that he could have a look at through the week (although the manufacturing is oop north).

Feel free to drop me a pm if you’re/he is interested.

[Pinkie15]

Don't know if they support this type of thing, but what about enquiring at "space city" in Stevenage.

Distance-wise not too far from Watford, by rail a pita, but there's the 724 (I think it is) bus service.

[Tango13]

Martin Baker are just down the road from you.

[WolfieBot]

Millbrook, just off the M1 J13. All sorts of automotive test and research going on there.

Vauxhall headquarters are in Luton.

[MRichards99]

randlemarcus said:

Through school, or off your own bat? I know a fair few places wont touch placements unless they are via proper channels.

I remember that the school I went to (Ofsted 'outstanding' mind you) wanted us to sort out our own work experience out, preferably in school holidays we were told. Thought it was silly that they just piled the responsibility down to us, only about 10% of the year ended up doing anything. Someone at the time said lack of funding to sort it out (and that they had no requirement to?) but the place had money to chuck at anything (it just spent £70k on a proper area to do cricket stuff). I got my GCSEs in 2015 so it's not too long ago.