School Based Trainee

I am looking at putting on a school based trainee next year.
The qualification will be MEM20105 - Certificate II in Engineering (production technology)

Has anybody had a trainee? What are the major pitfalls I need to be aware of ?
(I am guessing the problem may be the parents)

It is not costing us anymore than the kid's wage ( the RTO does not have a gap fee) and then we get $2000 back from the govt at the 6 month mark.

 

I've had good and bad experience - happy to have a chat.

 

Thanks Xenia,
what was the biggest problem with trainees?

 

We do certificate 4 in real estate training in our office.

 

We've had some excellent ones that we have employed later as part of a team.

Some of the problems have been, poor dress codes - we have strict rules for office attire, no focus on task, some of them have had no basic experience in anything, no idea how to put a stamp on a letter, no idea how to staple things together...

My own children have helped out in my office since 10, they write Christmas cards, basic filing, send letters to clients - stuff envelopes, make coffee etc.... some of the school based trainers - 6 years older do not have these same basic skills.

 

We were once running a seminar and I had signed the banquet order for a venue. I asked one of the trainees to email my signed document to the venue and mentioned "they are asking for payment for this please tell them that they already have my credit card details"

The document went out from her email account with her signature and name at the bottom and a message saying

"Here is the document you wanted you already have my credit card details"

The worse thing is she could not understand what was wrong as that is what I told her to say!

 

Oh dear. We had 2 at a previous place of employment who didn't know how to post letters. They were given a bundle of letters to post so stuffed 4 letters to different people into one envelope and posted them off. We got some phone calls from very confused recipients!

 

I have not had a trainee but I have supervised them when I worked for an RTO. It's a great opportunity for the kid and the employers that were supervising spoke very highly of them. I think it's a matter of matching up the trainees interests with the right employer. All of mine were doing really well.

Issues are a lack of life experience and some might not have a clue, as Xenia mentioned. It's a matter of outlining in detail your expectations in terms of dress, punctuality, communication protocols etc. Don't assume they will know any of this beforehand.

 

I have had loads over the years, have 5 at present between 2 businesses. Well chosen ones can often stay on and become great permanent/ professional staff.

 

Thanks, that gives me a good insight. My kids ( like yours) were working in our businesses from the time they were 8 & 10.

 

I'm sure kids that were raised correctly, like yours, would have no trouble in this scenario

 

Good to hear that overall the experience is a positive one. If this works out, we would like to offer it every year. I see it as a win win. We get a young person to do some of the "junior jobs" that often we are just too busy to do. By training them through out the year, they should be quite productive by the end of the year when the busy season comes around. The kids of course come out with some real work experience.

 

I would also highly recommend seeing if you can talk directly with any of the student's classroom teachers. They quite often will be able to pass on a lot of valuable information about the student's work ethic, attitude to boring or challenging tasks etc.

If a student turns up to every lesson 10 minutes late, never looks like they've brushed their hair, and puts their head on the table to 'sleep' through a lesson, it may be a sign of things to come in the workplace.

I've found that, even though some students may find my classes hard, or may not be 'excited' about being at school, they will still be punctual, put in the effort and try to improve, and also try to use appropriate communication techniques. Even if they're not an 'A' student (and their academic aptitude means that they never will be), they're definitely still a student I'd recommend for employment.

 

I found the opposite with the program I was running. The program targeted at risk students on the basis they were struggling in school. All of my students performed very well in the workplace and also at their certificate studies. As a result, their grades at school significantly improved. That a student is struggling is not an indication they will not perform well in a traineeship. That said, none of my students had a bad attidude at school. It was more that they just didn't get it until they ventured into the workplace. Things fell into place after that.

 

There's a difference between 'struggling' at school, and still being a 'good worker'. I've got a lot of students who are strugglers and currently aren't the best students - their grades are very average - but they still put in the effort, and I think they'd be a very good worker. When recommending a student for any employment, I offer my feedback on their attitude and demeanour, more so than their grades.

 

I have had the pleasure of a few work experience kids (granted, not quite the same thing ) but the experience differed markedly.

From one who was keen to have a go at anything. The funniest was one who went to make teas & coffee for a meeting. (Since when do you use boiling water? The look, priceless! )

 

You only get out what you put in!*

*some leave are just using these kids as cheap labour to do the boring tasks where they don't learn anything.

It's worth working out a plan where you can get the "junior" tasks done by then plus give them a chance to learn the more technical tasks or take on responsibility and ownership. But also it comes down to the student, you need to find the ones that WANT to learn and have a go not just the ones ticking it off the assessment list.
At my last job we had a few grad engineers coming through, and the bosses idea was old school and had them doing rubbish jobs and didn't teach them,they were just cheap labour.
They hated the industry from day one thanks to him and knew to steer clear. I found some were computer whizzes who were good at excel and data entry tasks and others wanted to know the nuts and bolts of it all. If they were keen I'd give them more interesting work and let the other uninterested grads do the boring stuff. I got one kid (22ish) to do a safety audit on the job site, he was ******** himself to have to ask the rough nut blokes what they were doing. Told him to day g'day and ask some questions and follow the form, easy. he earned the respect of the guys by not being a tool and they took him under their wing and let him play with some gear. Not being a ******** is important in life

 

One pitfall is that if you don't hit certain completion targets, you won't get the gov payments.

 

We are also getting a new trainee soon - we've had one young lady that has been with us for almost 4 years and has just left to help out in family business. She was great.

I personally have seen a huge correlation between good grades at school and good work ethic. The smarter ones seem to make better trainees.

 

Have you got a link to more info on this?