Out of the shadows

Oscar Wilde said experience is the name people give their mistakes. I call mine work experience.

Through shameless nepotism, I lined up a week at Richard Rogers’ architectural firm in London. For the right person it would have been a gift, but to my mind it was too much like hard work. It is entirely my fault. At the first hint of what working life was like I ran scared, unable to distinguish between the exciting job of designing iconic buildings and the mundane tasks they had to give me (totally unqualified as I was).

After only four days I decided not to be an architect. I regret it, but most of all I’m miffed I didn’t arrange to do a few days work shadowing instead. It would have given me a totally different perspective.

To all intents and purposes, work shadowing and work experience are chalk and cheese. Work shadowing gives you a much better insight into a particular job. You get to follow someone round and see what their career actually looks and feels like.

On the inside

Victoria Parks found work shadowing essential to her career decisions. ‘Two years after graduating I wanted a career change. I had been working in banking and while it was challenging, I didn’t really enjoy it. I had always wondered about teaching, but I was aware that the reality of a job can be very different from the idea, so I did some work shadowing at a local secondary school.’

Just a few days gave Victoria a real insight into what the job entailed. ‘It was really useful. You can’t tell what a job is like by reading about it. I got a very clear idea of what teaching is like day-to-day - both the good and the bad.’

You might think that some jobs aren’t suited to work shadowing, but the novelist Ian McEwan spent two years shadowing a neurosurgeon as research for his most recent novel, Saturday. Where there’s a will there’s a way and if Victoria’s experience is anything to go by, it can be surprisingly straightforward to set up. ‘I just contacted the head teacher and after going through a disclosure check I was able to arrange a time to go in.’

So, what can you expect? Well as work shadowing placements are often quite brief don’t expect to be given huge responsibilities. ‘I didn’t do any teaching,’ Victoria notes. ‘But I observed experienced professionals at work and I got the opportunity to think about the skills that I would need to develop if I was going to do the job.’

Work shadowing gives you time to think and that is the most valuable thing when making career decisions.

The right experience

It is important to note that work shadowing is not necessarily a replacement for experience. There are some things you can only get out of a sustained period of work experience and a bit of hard graft. Work shadowing is a tool for making decisions, whereas once you have made those decisions experience can really help your CV and even open doors.

Tim Abrahams is Deputy Editor of Blueprint, a magazine that reports on architecture, design and culture. The internship programme they run is a good illustration of the difference between work shadowing and worthwhile experience.

‘We run an internship scheme which is quite developed.’ (He’s being modest. Last year they entered the Edge Employer Awards which invest in innovative work placement schemes). ‘Placements usually last about a month and over the past two years we have had 16 or 17 interns. Successful applicants will do a range of things, from the mundane like opening the mail to more career-focused opportunities, like writing for the magazine.’

Work shadowing is about investigating what sort of thing you want to do, but schemes like the internship programme run by Blueprint are for people who have been through this process and have something they are aiming at. ‘We get people who are interested in journalism, but also people who want to work in design,’ Tim explains. ‘They get to make that essential first step and to make contacts. They also get to build up a portfolio and learn skills important to their development. Some interns even end up working for the magazine.’

So entering your second year, if like Victoria and me, you are uncertain about what you want to do, remember it might be a mistake to dive headlong into a demanding work experience regime. Pick up the phone and arrange some work shadowing. It could help you make important decisions so that when it comes to getting that experience you can really make it count.

Further information:

• Work experience community

More features on work experience:

• The time of your life Your second year signals work experience
• A good PR move Kate Lowe talks about her PR placement.