My Career Ready internship with DYW - bY jACK tELFER

Jack is a young person from Lasswade High School. He has just completed a 4 week Career Ready internship here at DYW.

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My name is Jack Telfer and I started a 4 week long internship with the DYW team through a programme called Career Ready. I was picked for this programme at the end of 4th year at school just going into 5th year and I was told that I would be going on a paid internship course for 4 weeks at the start of 6th year and that it would start in the summer. I initially thought that it was not for me but decided to do it anyway. In the lead up to the placement anyone on the programme had to go to an event which was for the pupils to meet their mentors who all came from different businesses. I met my mentor Neil he told me that he was part of the DYW team within the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. He explained parts of what he did and what the business was about. I still didn’t have much of an idea of what it was DYW did until I started my internship.

Before my first day I went out and bought a couple of shirts and pairs of trousers, I also spent some time deciding the best bus routes for getting there, the shortest one I could find was 1 hour and 15 minutes long. On my first day I went to the office not sure what to expect. Once I got to the building I was greeted by Neil and Leanne who showed me my desk, Neil showed me what I would be doing over the next 4 weeks, Leanne gave me a tour around the building and office showing me all the fire exits. The rest of the day was mostly a introduction to what the business did and was about.

Over the first 2 weeks I got to meet the rest of the DYW team, Emma, Michelle and Sophie everyone of the team where kind and helpful in showing me what they did and anything they needed me to do. Over the 4 weeks I got to go to a lot of different meetings with the team members and learn more about the working world and the inner workings of the businesses, for example I learnt more about Edinburgh College and the recruitment for the St James Centre.

For the last 2 weeks Neil got me placements to experience different businesses. These businesses where the FLB Group in Dalkeith learning all about their factory and offices, the Recruitment and Skills Centre at Fort Kinnaird, learning all about the recruitment process and Hadden Construction working with joiners on the extension of Cuiken Primary school. These placements have given me a good idea what these different industries could offer in a career.

During this Internship I have gained and improved many skills, these skills are things such as Confidence, Communication, Organisation and Networking, all these skills will serve to help me in the future. I have also gained new connections with people, further building my networking skills and my network of people.

This internship has been a fun experience for me and has given me a new insight into the world of work. Each place I went to had so many different things going on and has shown me that there are lots of different paths in a business and that even if you are in the same company your job can be very different a couple of years down the line.

I have taken many things from this experience and would recommend this to anyone who doesn’t know what they want to do with their future as it has shown me many new paths I didn’t know existed.
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I would like to thank the DYW team for this experience and helping me along the way.