Help Student Work Experience Placement

Helenb

I have just been told I have a 15 year old coming to do work experience with me for a few hours next week, does anyone have any experience of this or bright ideas of what I could do so as not to put her off accountancy for life. I'm not even sure that she has any interest in it because she is getting general experience with every one here, and just don't want to leave her with filing to do!

Rinske

I don't know. Does she has to do it herself or could you just show her a lot and completely confuse her?

Filing is the easy option, but a bit boring, however a lot of things are boring and you don't want to end up having to correct her three hours of work either.

Have you got some kind of a reconciliation she could do? Or another small thing, where it is obvious to you if she did it right or not? Any simple, but not too boring data entry work maybe?

At the start of my career, I've worked for a company where I had to talk to customers, take the order and send out address stickers (with barcodes) for them, if I had nothing else to do and was up to date, I would spent time sorting out sticker numbers to see who the customer was that used them, so they could be updated in the system and invoice them, which was a lot more fun then the rest of the actual job. Another of those small jobs was just going around handing out payslips and collecting time sheets, a nice way to talk to everyone in the company and spent the time really. After collecting them, I would put them on the system, a fairly simple job, but fun as well, as you had to pay close attention to what you were doing. In the same company I also spent 3 days changing dots with kommas in excel, as they were swapping to a new system that didn't recognize the dot for decimals, which I found really boring. (Was a job tho, didn't complain and they offered me a full time job afterwards in payroll)

Have you got something like that, where it doesn't need a lot of explaining and is fun for a few hours and not too boring, like changing dots with kommas?

Helenb

Thanks Rinske, unfortunately we're quite up to date at the moment because the auditors are in, I'm sure I'll find something though!

Naz

Hi, I just completed AAT level 3 and am looking for work experience. The problem I am having is finding work experience. Ive already been told if you are new to accounting your first role is likely to be making coffee!!

Caspar

HI
I am an AAT member in practice, and on occasion have offered work experience to people who are looking at our industry.
I find that if you can give them a small job, such as a sole trader, who has lots of small receipts that need putting into date order and inputting onto a spreadsheet. Throughout the period they are working there, they can see an accounting job from start to finish, and it helps them to understand the P & L and B/S.
They also see that things have to be sequential numbered and filed etc.
Just be aware, that you will be asked a question every 10 minutes though, as they don't want to do anything wrong. So smile, and have a lot of patience, and good luck!
Caspar

Gem7321

My brother did his work experience in a practice and they had him adding up a big red cashbook for a client and ticking off bank statements. Kept him busy!

Monsoon

Caspar wrote: »

HI
I am an AAT member in practice, and on occasion have offered work experience to people who are looking at our industry.
I find that if you can give them a small job, such as a sole trader, who has lots of small receipts that need putting into date order and inputting onto a spreadsheet. Throughout the period they are working there, they can see an accounting job from start to finish, and it helps them to understand the P & L and B/S.
They also see that things have to be sequential numbered and filed etc.
Just be aware, that you will be asked a question every 10 minutes though, as they don't want to do anything wrong. So smile, and have a lot of patience, and good luck!
Caspar

Thanks for this, we've agreed to give a girl work experience and racking our brains for things we can ask her to do! Got a few ideas....!