When should your child do work experience? | 26

Brett Campbell (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to Future Learners. I am your host, Brett Campbell, the chairman and CEO of Euka Future Learning, and I’m joined by my lovely co -host, as always, the founder and the head of education, Ellen Brown. How are you, Ellen?

Ellen (00:16)
Very well, thanks, Brett.

Brett Campbell (00:18)
Great to hear. I’m gonna launch into this episode by giving a bit of a shout out to Elke Cora. Elke Cora found her way over to Apple iTunes and dropped us a five star review. So thank you Elke. She says, love Euka Future Learning. It has literally transformed our teenage daughter’s life, giving family time back, reignited our daughter’s learning. As a parent juggling work and schooling, the Euka platform has made the whole process from homeschooling, registration and reporting and classes online, the change we needed. Couldn’t recommend the podcast and you can feature learning platform highly enough. So thank you very much, Elke. And thank you to the next person listening to this right now, who’s going to head over to iTunes and drop us a five -star review as well. We really appreciate that. But if you’re watching this on YouTube, like, subscribe, do all of those things. Make sure you hit the notification bell as well. That way you’ll get notified when we drop our new episodes.

So with that in mind, got all the love and hugs out the way. Alan, let’s jump into today’s episode. We’re going to talk about an exciting topic actually for me personally. I get excited about this because I love the whole essence of it. And whilst this episode is going to be catered more towards, let’s call it secondary, senior years, I think, you know, if you’ve got any children in primary school this will be good for you to have some sort of pre -thinking around it, but also how you can tie this into assisting in those years as well. So that was a bit of a riddle for you to, to try and solve from what I just shared there, but we’re going to be talking about the concept of work experience and part -time jobs and working. and that’s something that, you know, very close to, to my chest in many ways of, had. I had many, many, many jobs as a child and as a kid growing up and at high school and so forth. I’m sure we’ll get into some of those. But Alan, I want to talk to you about this topic of work experience and sort of the nuances and how it might, like what are the things that parents have to be aware of and to consider? And then sort of what flexibility do we have as it relates to work experience? So I’m going to hand you to start where you think we should best start as it relates to this topic.

Ellen (02:39)
Wonderful. Well, it’s an important topic to me, because I have teenagers in the house. So I think that homeschooling provides this opportunity to explore the world of work in a way that you don’t necessarily get when you’re in mainstream school. I know when I was in mainstream school, you were lucky if you got a week of work experience once, you know, but when they’re homeschooling, they have opportunity to try a whole heap of different things when it comes to work experience.

I guess the first place to start is family and friends. That’s always the best place to start as far as availabilities and looking around and seeing what opportunities you might have that are close to home.

Brett Campbell (03:19)
So let’s look at as a starting point. So a family embarks on the homeschooling journey. How often and when should they look at having a work experience, I guess you would say experience, inside their child’s learning journey?

Ellen (03:38)
So look, every child’s gonna be different. And it depends why they may have moved into homeschooling. Generally speaking, in the past, it was year nine, grade nine, grade 10 kind of age group, but there’s no reason why it has to even be that late. You might have a child that doesn’t necessarily find the sitting down and doing the education part a real joy, you know? And you might say that it actually works better for my child if…

two days a week, they’re going and doing some work with a family or friend, you know, and they’re doing that work experience, you know, two days a week from grade seven, perhaps, or you might have a child that has had some anxiety and you think, you know, maybe once a week, we might be able to go and do something together or something like that. So we’re not talking about, you know, avoiding child labour laws. Like that’s one of those ones we have to talk about, obviously, there are minimum ages and we’re not talking about paid work, we’re talking about experience.

Brett Campbell (04:27)
Yeah.

Ellen (04:33)
but every child being different. But by grade nine, it’s a really good opportunity. Your child is at the age where they’re starting to think about, am I going to do some further study with grade 11 and 12? What’s out there? If I am going to study in grade 11 and 12, have I got a bit of a focus on what I might be?

trying to aim for. So it’s not just for kids that are finishing school after grade 10. It’s actually for kids who are going right through but also need to think about what options are out there and what does it really look like in the workplace.

Brett Campbell (05:05)
Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting. One of my first experiences of, of work experience per se is, you know, when I was at school and, you know, to your point, I think I only ever had like one or two, potential opportunities of this. The first time I would have been circa, yeah, 10, 11 years old. and I went down to the local, farming.

mechanic and, you know, they had big diggers and everything. And I was like, yeah, this will be cool. I’ll go and learn how to fix a tractor for three hours. I basically swept the entire building and I picked up all the rag, warden weeds out on the, the, out on the courtyard. I was, I was, tell you what, it wasn’t what I thought it was, but it did teach me a couple of things. it was an introduction into the, the real world of, you know, working.

the real world of expectations. And yeah, I think that those are a couple of real big things as well, because it’s to your point, it’s not about just getting out there and sending a kid into a job that they’re going to go, yeah, I’m going to be a diesel mechanic. And then they come home all upset because they didn’t get to touch a bolt or a spanner or a tool. And they basically just swept the entire time. Now that’s obviously not the ideal situation.

that is exploiting child labor to be fair. But in the same token, I think a good starting point is sitting down and really answering, what are you looking to try and solve by this? What are we looking to really try and produce as an outcome with our child going to explore XYZ? And you mentioned that an easy starting point is, and it certainly is, it’s a lower hanging fruit is,

go to a friend, family member that you know who might already have a business and you can sort of get them introduced to that avenue there. But a few things just to tap on and we could talk about these and then we could talk about more nuances of the work experience itself. But it does a number of things. One is it’ll help them build confidence by just being out there and participating in something bigger than their own.

family unit, right? Because if you’ve never really like helping mom and dad in the garden is great and a great thing, but actually going out there and when you actually help other people, you get a very different sense of satisfaction or accomplishment, right? So it can certainly help build that confidence to be able to get out there and participate in other things that are outside of your household. There’s also the

this concept of preparing their child, preparing your child for independence, right? And know that, hey, this is what this person does. This is actually a job. This is a transactional relationship here. Whilst you’re not getting paid, because again, we could talk about the legalities of that, but I’ll tell you what, if you go into your uncle’s or your auntie’s business, make sure you work out a good…

cash, cash job. I don’t, don’t take my advice, but that’s what I’m certainly trying to, some cash cash money for your, for your time. and learn how to negotiate. but it’s, it’s literally, you know, an opportunity to start to understand how the world works. Right. Cause your, your child would see you or your partner go off to work every single day. They come home and.

Ellen (08:23)
Thank you.

Brett Campbell (08:50)
in their head. So I had dad goes to work. What does he do? I had to earn money to pay the bills. But then you start looking at talking about taxes and you start talking about costs associated with other things, you know, and it really opens up a really nice learning environment where it’s not just you’re doing you’re doing work experience and you’re doing it because you’re going to go and learn some hard labor and and

teach you a lesson or two, there’s a plethora of different outcomes that you can get from it. So I think that’s a really good starting point to go, hey, this is what we’re looking to do and why we’re looking to do it.

Ellen (09:30)
You know, I totally agree with what you’re saying in that about working out your place in the world and how all of a sudden it helps you to see the world as a bigger place. And you know, a generation ago, by the time young men were 15 and women were 15 or 16, they were an integral part of a family. They were they had a role in the family of helping support a family. And so, you know, young men, I guess, grew up a lot earlier. But

but we’re able to take on a lot of responsibility, different to how we keep our kids quite young for a long time now, but we often find that kids can start having all kinds of behavior issues because they are, you know, young men are often adults in this body and they’re still sitting in, you know, mainstream school have this problem all the time where they’re sitting in school and it’s…

you know, hands on heads and lining up and we’re not you’re all of this kind of thing. And these are young men or young women that are really capable. And so going out there into the workforce and proving to yourself that you have this value and that you have got these skills and you’re developing skills is a real big confidence boost for young people.

Brett Campbell (11:32)
Okay.

Ellen (11:33)
No idea. I just don’t know why it happens. There’s no one on computers here. They’ve all been banned from computers.

I wonder if I need to go somewhere else and if I have the problem on slack or zoom.

Brett Campbell (11:52)
Okay. It’s okay. That’s just it. So you’re going to have to start your whole piece again. Okay. and.

Ellen (12:08)
Another option, I mean I don’t know if I need to go somewhere else.

Brett Campbell (12:10)
No, it’s, it’s, look, let’s not, let’s not sweat on it. So I’ll get you to start and based off, I believe what I was saying was, you know, it just opens up a plethora of different opportunities for children and homes with work experience.

Ellen (12:15)
Okay. Okay.

Mm. Mm.

I totally see how important it is for them to be able to get out and get a real sense of themselves in the world. A generation ago, by the time people were 15 or 16, they had a real important part to play in a family. And that develops a sense of self. They would be giving part of their wage to help the family and that was quite normal. And so you would see people getting that sense of self. You didn’t have that same like…

Who am I and why am I here kind of thing a generation ago. Now, this is only one aspect of that, but I’ve noticed in my own kids as they have started first work experience and then part -time work, this confidence in themselves and their role in the family and being able to help with things. Like my daughter just started a job, her first job and she came home with a loaf of bread. She’s working at a bakery. She came home with a loaf of bread. I said, I’ll pay you back for that. She goes,

no, no, I was happy to buy it. And I could just see this sense of self, this pride in the fact that we’re all going to really, you know, we made a big deal about having this beautiful fresh bread, you know, and, and, and that’s something you can’t get in another way, you know, it’s, it’s a really important part of growing up.

Brett Campbell (13:47)
Yeah. And if you’re without sabotaging this episode and going down a couple of rabbit holes, if you look at the true sort of pinnacle of where us humans really do deeply aspire to move towards it, it is that of contribution. It’s that ability to be able to deeply give back. And that’s the truest up echelon as you sort of move forward. And, you know, interesting enough, the other day, for example, and these are the most meaningful moments and,

Yeah, there was, we’re at the petrol store the other day and this guy in front of me, his car declined and he was like, he was absolutely obliterated, like upset. no, what am I going to do? Did I say, mate, I’ll pay for your fuel, paid for his fuel sort of walk down. He was just like, for me that giving that, like, it was like $60 of fuel. Like that, that gave me $10 ,000 return of how, how, how it’s nice to be able to go and do that. Because about three weeks ago, I drove through the Zarafas drive -through.

right? Getting my getting a coffee. And I also ordered, you know, like a couple of pieces of food and the order was like $25 or something. And I got up to the window and this, the lady goes, the car in front of you is already paid for it. And I felt like this person gave me a down payment on my mortgage, you know, like, because I was just like, my God. So that connection of giving and, and this is what this is really about. It’s whilst it’s masqueraded and work experience, it’s about,

what does this actually produce as an outcome? So there’s the input we put in, which is I’m going to this thing and I’m going to sweep the floor, right? Like I did, swept the floor, cleaned it probably the best that factory has ever been cleaned. And the output of that was obviously producing and doing all the work and making it clean. But the outcome was I actually went back to them the week after and asked them for a job. I’ve got a job for $4 an hour.

And I would go after school every day. I would go to this factory. The first thing I’d do is pick up the broom and I would clean up their factory. I’d literally take about an hour and a half and I’ve got like $6 for it. And I thought, my goodness. So I took advantage of this opportunity. Now, of course I’m like, well, this isn’t the job I really want to do. No one wants to sweep up floors. Right. But I’ll tell you what it did do was when I went into my apprenticeship with, you know, I was 16. I got, got, asked nicely to leave high school. I’ll put it that way. And I was a cabinet maker.

guess what the first job I was in a sawdust factory, basically in a cabinet making factory, you’re a broom technician. Don’t worry. I’ve got experience on the broom. I know how to like, there’s an art to actually sweeping a floor up. And if someone can teach you and show you how to sweep a floor, it’s like, you can actually do it really well. And, and it can help progress and propel you to the next level until you’re no longer the floor sweeper. Right. so I think there’s,

It’s the experience that is gained, right? It’s the outcome that we can produce from this thing. And yeah, my advice would be, again, sitting down with your child. And this isn’t about trying to find their dream job, although it could be a great thing. Like maybe they want to become a veterinarian and maybe they’re going to volunteer at the local animal shelter or something like that. And yep, their first job will probably be picking up poo.

Right? Like you’re not going to go and get to do all the fun activities, although there might be some of that mixed in, but it can give them also a sense of, you know, do I really like, do I, am I just caught up because I love animals versus could I see myself in here doing this and seeing that and being a part of that. And it can help give insight as well into what you’re doing. This certainly isn’t about work experience, go and find your dream job. So you know what you’re going to do when you leave high school, you know, or when you, when you graduate or when you.

you know, as an adult, this is more about what life skills can I learn from this process? And the more you do it, you know, cause I asked you earlier, how often should you do it? And the beautiful thing that you said with homeschooling is that you can do it as often as you like. You can go to as many different places as you like. It’s about how many touch points of experience can we get from this? Right.

Ellen (17:58)
Yeah, yeah. And you know what the difference between work experience and getting a part time job is exactly what you said where it work experience opens doors that wouldn’t be open for a part time job. So you’re not going to get a part time job at the vets necessarily there’s vet nurses that do all those jobs, but you will get an opportunity to work experience. For example, one of my boys decided he might like to do race motorbike.

mechanics. Now, you’re not going to go get a part time job there at KTM because that kind of place, you know, will hire people that are experienced. But just going and saying, look, you know, I’m looking to just do a week and, and he did sweep floors and he did degrees things all day long or those kinds of things.

But what he did get to do is he got to see what does the mechanics do there? What does a day in the life look like? And that is invaluable. You can’t find that on YouTube. You know, you’ve you want to actually experience what does it feel like to be part of that team? And is that something I’m interested in? And you know, sometimes young ones will say to you, yeah, but you know, I’m going to be there all week and I’m going to get nothing from it. I think we’re going to get any dollars.

And I say, you know, people are at university for four years, it’s costing them $50 ,000 to be there. And, and they still don’t have a job, but they’ve had to pay for that learning. And so you can go there and it doesn’t cost you something. So it’s trying to help them understand that work experience is like a free opportunity to step into something. And if you do a great job, it’s so interesting how all of a sudden these people think this kid’s got something and then

Brett Campbell (19:32)
Yep.

Ellen (19:34)
Sometimes a part time job will come from that anyway.

Brett Campbell (19:36)
Yeah. And that’s the, that’s a big unlock as well is prove yourself first. And I think that’s such a strong value to have as a human being of going, you know what, don’t expect someone just to give you something just because you believe you’re entitled to it. You know, put your best foot forward and show them, give them a reason so valuable that they cannot refuse your offer. So when I was 11, I, one of my, I guess you’d say first,

job jobs under the table, of course, because it was cash money back then. But I’d door knock up and down, I’d walk up and down my street. And this was born out of not because I wanted to work or nor did I want work experience. This was I wanted money, so I can go down to the fish and chip shop and I can play Street Fighter and I can buy a dollar worth of jet plane lollies. That was my goal that I was aiming towards. And we didn’t have a spare dollar or $2 to go.

You know, just throwing out to me. So my mom was like, if you want to, you’re going to go and go and earn the money yourself. And I’m okay. What can I do? Cause I don’t know. Well, what, what, what do you know how to do? And from like age 10, I’d, I’d started mowing our lawns. but grudgingly, of course, cause that in New Zealand, it was like a quarter acre section. So they’re quite big sections and I would always leave it till it went too long and it would be five times as hard. And my mom told me that every time. And I’d never learned the lesson until it took me probably.

20, 30 lawns in to learn the lesson that just do it more regularly, Brett. It’ll be a lot easier. Anyway, so I’d door knock and I’d literally, my sales pitch was, hi, my name’s Brett. Do you have any work for me? And they’re like, no. Next door, hey, my name’s Brett. Do you have any work for me? Literally get up and down my street. Next week I’d go back again, persistent. I’m like, hey, just wondering if you had any jobs pop up. No, I don’t. I’d literally went through my entire street like twice and then I was like, this isn’t working. Knock on the door again. Hey,

and I’ve knocked on your door a few times, but, I just want to let you know, I have a lawnmower and I noticed that your lawns are a little bit long. I can actually mow them. If I do a good job, will you let me do the lawns for you? I only charge $5 for a small lawn or $10 for a big lawn. And one of the ladies was like, okay. And then I did a good job. Like I did a supreme job. I made sure of it. Cause I was looking for that extra job and the consistency. So then I’m like, my God, if I mow this lawn every two weeks.

I’m earning $5 like that’s that basically pays for my lollies throughout the week. But then I did one and I got a taste of it. I’m like, I gotta go get another lawn. I’ve got another lawn. And it got to a stage where at the sort of height of it, I had about six lawns down my street that I’d mow. So I couldn’t really play with my mates after high school too often because I’ve got to go mow the lawn. I’ve got to go mow the lawn. Right. but what was funny, cause what this then taught me was,

I was putting the lawnmower back in the garden shed at the end of, you know, I did two lawns after, after school. It was like six 30 at night. It was starting to get dark over there in New Zealand at the time. It was sort of winterish and, it took me like two and a half hours to do it. I was exhausted and I’m pushing the lawnmower into the garden shed and my stepdad, he comes up to me and he goes, how’s the lawns going? I said, it’s going really good. You know, I had like $15 cash in my pocket. I was just like, look at this. This is so cool. and,

And he goes, he goes, where are you getting the petrol from for the lawnmower? I said, I’m using our, I’m using our petrol. He goes, our petrol? He goes, you’re earning money now. What do you like that costs money to, to, to pay for the petrol. I’m paying for the petrol for you to do your lawns. I was like, well, and immediately I was sort of my first ever negotiation in business. I was like, well, what if I just mow our lawn for free? Right.

and you pay for the petrol. Now, our lawn was a large lawn and it would have been $10. So I’ve done a negotiation and I’m like, okay, I’m gonna put this, without me having to give up any of my money, I’m gonna make this trade. And then he’s like, okay, cool, yep, that’s a deal. Shook on it. Then he goes, you wanna go and fill up the petrol tank? And I took the little petrol can, went down to the petrol shop, and this was before petrol was crazy prices. Now,

I literally, it cost me $3 .30. Cause I remember looking at it going, it was my first light bulb moment of where my negotiation went wrong because I looked at the lawnmower, the price was like $3 .30 to fill up this tin. I was like, I did both of those lawns today and I only used half a tank. I’m like, so I could really get four lawns out of one can, which is $3 .30. And I’ve just given up $10 worth of lawns. I was like, what a bad deal. And I went to try and.

Renega on the deal, he goes, no, he shook my hand. That there taught me a much more valuable lesson of like, I shook on the agreement. Don’t come back and take the agreement back straight away just because it suits me. So it taught me to go into the agreement and look at things now through a different, you know, look at all the different options. So I share that story because that was literally in its entirety and there’s lots more to it, but it taught me so much about so much.

It took me about rejection of people saying, no, I don’t have work for you. No, I don’t have work for you. And it took me to go, well, what if I do this? I can weed your garden. I can do this. I can paint you paint a wall. Like, like these are the things that I can do. Wasn’t much of a skillset, but you know, I’m here to do it. I’m prepared, you know? And once you start performing, people will want you to do a lot more. You know?

Ellen (25:17)
Yeah, and it really does come down to desire like you had a motivator there of money. And, and that’s obviously a great one when it comes to young people. Some of them are more have more desire than others. And some of them are more introverts and extroverts, of course. And so you know, your role as a parent in work experience, you have to be very you can’t force them to go do work experience not going to work out. So it has to be that your child has said, you know, I wish I could do such and such, I’d love to do this when I’m finished.

And then to be able to go alongside them and say, well, how about, you know, do you want to send an email to these people, you know, helping them out, like, don’t expect that they’re just going to go out there and get that themselves, just helping them out as a parent. And it also helps, you know, say the KTM example, it helped the company know that there was a parent behind the child and that

you know, it’s part of homeschooling that we have this opportunity and just giving them context because otherwise it’s this random, random kid and your children need that kind of support. It’s the first time of them venturing out into the world. So don’t be afraid as a parent to help them put together an email, have them you know, help you with it and script it and have it have it from them or even from you and them together, you know, so that it gives that

the company, the idea that there is a parent that’s, you know, watching over what’s going on there, and that gives them confidence. So, so when you’re looking at starting out work experience, the first thing is yes, look, you know, why does a child want to do if they just want to do it, because they just don’t love being sitting and doing this, or they want to just put their schoolwork on to three days, or they just want to take a week and explore saying they’re two different things. If it’s I want to regularly be out doing something, maybe it’s family and friends is a great way of doing that.

And you know, one of my kids has found that working for a family member is great. He hasn’t got much idea of what he wants to do later. So that’s fulfilling that need for him. Whereas there’s another one that’s got a real idea of what he wants to do. He wants to try as many of things in that area as he can. And so we have to go beyond family and friends. And that’s where I’ve helped him. And he’s become more confident now in reaching out because he can say, I spent a week doing this.

Brett Campbell (27:14)
Yeah.

Ellen (27:34)
And I learned all these things. I’d love to spend a week. So he’s got something to build on now and launch out into saying, okay, I’ve done a few things in work experience. Do I want to fulfill my job? Is my job gonna come from that? Is that something? And he’s had offers, that’s interesting that he’s had offers come out. He’s going, you know, that wasn’t the thing. I can’t tell you how happy I am that he hasn’t gone down and started.

either apprenticeships or university degrees on something he hadn’t tried out because a lot of kids do it. They’ll get to the end of uni and go, didn’t actually want to do that anyway. How often do you meet an adult that’s got a degree for something that they’re not working in? So it’s a really important opportunity really.

Brett Campbell (28:01)
Mm. Yeah.

It’s a, it’s a interesting point you make there because when I got kicked out of high school, I was given the mandate of you got to get a job or else you’re going to start. You’re going to have to go and fend for yourself. Like if you don’t get a job and start contributing now that you’re not at school, you’re going to be out on your, on your own two feet. Now, upon reflection, I know my mom never would have done that, but it was, it was a serious enough thing for me to go to church. I’d better get a job then.

And I took up the first job that was there. There was literally one apprenticeship in my little hometown. And I took it up because yeah, at school I loved woodwork and it was sort of the cabinet making. But I knew, and this is a valuable lesson is I knew pretty much straight away that I knew that that wasn’t the thing that I really wanted to do. And this sort of goes back to sometimes in life. And this is, I think, you know, if there’s,

I mean, there’s a series of really important lists I’d love to share with every sort of young evolving sort of, you know, teenage as you’re evolving into those early years is that there’s gonna be lots of things you do in your life that you just do not enjoy. I mean, adults do it right now. You might not enjoy your workplace right now, but it’s the means to the end and it’s providing the outcome for you and your family, et cetera, et cetera. But as a young person,

you know, it’s really important to know that, Hey, you actually don’t have to deeply, thoroughly enjoy this, right? what you need to know is why you’re doing it, the outcomes of what you’re doing and where that can lead to and how you can, and what lessons you can derive along the way that that is the key to it all because yeah.

And it’s easy to look back when you’ve gone through certain experience to go, yeah, that all makes sense. That’s the stepping stone to this, to that, to that, to that. But I know as well as it’s the apprenticeship world, the evolution of the internet and social media and remote working and AI and so forth. It’s a lot of jobs now are sitting behind a keyboard.

I mean, I’m glued to my seat pretty much 12 hours a day. And I come from a hard labor type background of what that was my sort of introduction to work. But the point that I’m making there is there’s going to be lots of things that your child does that they’re not going to enjoy. And it’s very important for us as parents to be able to let them know that and set the expectations, like set the bar pretty low.

Don’t set the bar so high that this is a make or break in, and you might go to the local veterinarian and your child might’ve had a bad experience at that specific veterinarian because the vet said something or the admin lady said something to her that was like, that didn’t come across right. And now the potential dream for being a veterinarian nurse or a vet itself is diminished because of that one experience. So very, very important that we set our children up for success with expectations. And this is just one of.

many different experiences that you can end up having. Right? So it’s, it’s very important to after they’ve done the work experience, sit down with them each day, whether they’re doing it for one day, or whether they’re doing it for several days in a row, or whether they’re doing it consistently over a period of time, sit down at the end of each, each day with them and assess what went really well. What were the things that you really liked? nothing. There has to be something like what, what was it specifically? You know, and then what didn’t you like? You know, what would you have preferred to happen?

What could you have done better? Like what rating would you give yourself out of 10 as it relates to listening? What rating would you give yourself out of 10 as it relates to the effort that you put in? What rating would you give yourself out of 10? What do you think they would rate you out of 10 of your effort? And just by going through that in itself, just some light questioning, your child will learn so much about the value of their input, which again leads to an end outcome for themselves and of course the business and.

people that they’re working for and doing this experience with. So.

Ellen (32:32)
You made actually a really good point there about social media. And one of the traps that I have seen is that, you know, kids are watching influencers and they’re watching people who are doing their dream job, turn your passion into work. And that’s great, but it’s definitely not what most people’s experience of work is.

Brett Campbell (32:47)
Mm. Mm -hmm.

Ellen (32:54)
And so I think it’s really important. The interesting thing is in this social media where we’re a lot of young people actually not interested in working hard, like they don’t, they are, they’re getting this message that you can be traveling around the world and just making videos of yourself and earning a lot of money. And some people do, but it’s rare. What you’ll find is that if you have a young person who you’ve talked through, you know, what does it look like? What would, how would this person see you if you were, you know, what value can you bring?

to the company, even if you’re sweeping the floor, what could you do to make sure that you’re looking for things extra than what the boss has asked you to do? That kind of message, they stand out, your kids stand out because it isn’t easy to find young people who have got a good work ethic. So work experience gives them the opportunity to develop that. And the interesting thing is, because it’s not hard to stand out and do a good job,

they’re getting feedback from the boss very often, you know, you know how well you’re doing and you know how surprised they were at you doing those little extra things that you weren’t asked and and that just builds that self confidence quite amazing.

Brett Campbell (34:03)
Yeah. And they’ll see the outcomes of doing that. And then they might start doing that at home as well. Right. In the essence of going above and beyond like going like, and, and to your point, it’s, it’s the, we need to set our children up for success. Right. I talked about what you do at the end of the homeschooling, but before they went in there and approached them and approached the new business and, and it was, they’re about to go and spend their hour or two up. Yeah.

Ellen (34:10)
Ha ha ha ha!

Brett Campbell (34:31)
during the day to participate, you need to sit down and go, okay, what does success look like for us here? Well, what do we want the boss of this company or your uncle or whomever it is that you’re going to work with, what do you want them to say about you at the end of this? Do you want them to say that you’re a really hard worker, you went above and beyond, you did all these things? Yeah, I’d love for them to say that. Okay, well, how can we help architect that as an outcome?

What do we need to do? What are the inputs we need to do? Well, we need to go above and beyond. If they say sweep the floor, you need to make sure every corner and crevice is swept. But not only that, sweep the walls, look for cobwebs in the, in the corners of the roofs. Like that, those are the type of things to, to help set them up because you’re right, Ellen. And it, it, even in this day and age with let’s say Yuka, for example, like when we put a rollout, we get anywhere from 600 to a thousand people apply for a role. And.

Sad to say, you don’t have to go too far above and beyond to stand out from the majority of people who apply for a role. Like even presenting a CV or a cover letter or going the extra mile and sending a little video of yourself, like those things you’ll stand out from 95 % of other people. So the bar is no longer that high where it’s like, my God, how would I ever get this? If your child really wants to work somewhere or get into a specific area,

It’s, you’ve just got to sit down and go, okay, what plan would we need to create? Cause I can tell you as an employee, an employer is I’m very impressed by people who go above and beyond who do that, do the things that most people don’t. And that I believe is the biggest lesson that we can learn from, you know, participating in work experience itself. It’s all the other, lessons that we can get along the way that are, that are going to come from that. And it’s.

positioning yourself as a person that someone wants to pick on their team, if that makes sense.

Ellen (36:32)
Hmm. When you’re deciding whether your child’s ready for work experience or not, in your thinking are they are, you know, general rule of thumb is they’ll let you know because they’re interested. And I can put my hand up and say I’m guilty of thinking, no, no, this one’s not ready. Definitely not ready. Maybe it’s because it’s my youngest, you know, and I’m thinking, no, she can’t, you know, the room’s not clean and you know, instructions aren’t necessarily followed real well. So how could you possibly

Brett Campbell (36:52)
Mm -hmm.

Ellen (37:00)
but it’s so interesting what they can achieve outside home. It doesn’t necessarily carry into the home, but it was just fascinating to see her embrace the job at the bakery and be very neat and tidy and very punctual and all the things that you think, you can be droning on about these things at home. It’s not necessarily happening. So I guess that.

Brett Campbell (37:03)
Of course.

Ellen (37:25)
that’s an encouragement to think just because you’re seeing a certain thing at home or what your child’s capable of doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what they’re capable of outside home. So if they’re asking, then they’re obviously going to be ready to give something like that a try. And, and I think that will be a great way. Now, the other thing we really need to address is that some companies will require the child to have insurance of some kind, and it comes up every now and again.

That’s because when a child goes from school to work experience, the school has insurance that they take with them. So good tip for that as a homeschooler, there’s a company called or a business called the Australian Homeschooling Association. It’s based in Victoria, Australian Homeschooling Association.

And they actually have a lot of information about work experience on their site. But when you join them, you actually gain some insurance that you can use as your work experience insurance. So it’s a non for profit company. They have a lot of good resources. But one thing that’s important is that when you join them, part of their membership is this work experience insurance. And so you’ll be able to go onto a link that’s on their website and get straight in and and organise that. So it’s not all businesses require that.

A lot of businesses have their own insurance, but if you’re asked, that’s good to know that you can tick that box if you need to.

Brett Campbell (38:52)
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely make sure you do your due diligence as you’re entering into the work experience realm. But hopefully today we’ll wrap it up there, Alan, on this one. I think we’ve covered a fair bit as it relates to that. And if at any, we’ve been able to highlight the benefits and the carry -on effects and carry -on benefits that will be achieved from just exposing your child, your children.

to such an environment. What you said earlier was that’s simply what you’ve enabled yourself to put up with. Your child will always push the barriers. Day one at work, they’re gonna perform to their highest ability until they know what the limitations of what they can and cannot get away with. I say that to Emily all the time. It’s like Ailer plays around and…

yeah, then I’ll come inside and she’s like, she’s been doing that for the last 20 minutes, not listening to me. And I might say something I’m like, because my parameters of what I put up with, are a little bit tighter than your parameters, right? And she’s just playing to your parameters. She’s, she’s, you know, she’s going to get away with it. So she’ll play to it. So that’s called human evolution. And, I absolutely love that. So, all right. Thank you, Ellen. Great topic. And, hopefully you’ve gotten value from this. Our dear listener, please head over to itunes, Spotify, YouTube.

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