The first eight months of my first full time job, I never met anyone in my team in person. The first day I was panicking about getting the new laptop set up, wondering if I was meant to be wearing a suit (I was not), and joining a series of talks by people I didn’t have time to research because I was trying to move to London in the middle of a pandemic. I memorised too many acronyms, met my manager who immediately went on Maternity leave, met my new manager to replace the first, and got told I didn't need to wear a shirt while sitting at my dining table on a slightly wobbly chair. After eight months of doing powerpoints, website edits, internal emails, talking to sales, and working with other big corporations, my first day in the office revealed something important: Working from home was great; but learning from home wasn’t. I’d picked up more about the culture and aims of the company on that day in the office than I had in the preceding months. For that reason, any company promoting their ‘all virtual’ work experience programme should be scrutinized.
Hands-On Experience Still Matters
Proponents of these schemes use phrases like ‘level the playing field’ and ‘opening opportunities to a wider socioeconomic group’, ignoring that while everyone would have access to an additional resource, the causes of inequality in recruitment would still remain. It also ignores the actual benefit of work experience: Learning how to be useful in an office, and learning what it is you DON’T want to do in life. An online quiz and a simulated presentation to a stakeholder don’t really hint at these deeper truths of industry. Job applications are already a nightmare, competing with 1000s of other people to get past a poorly tuned AI filter before a real, living and breathing human being even looks at your CV. Anyone can sit through a seminar and do a quiz to tick a box, giving them that extra 5% chance to get a job, but actual experience in desirable skills will be more likely to get you a good job than watching a mandatory training video.
When Remote Anything is Helpful
Covid undeniably changed work, and remote working is here to stay. As virtual experiences go, there are positive use cases. For example, for those considering medicine, if it’s a talk by a leading neurosurgeon, the exercises involves interacting with a doctor who knows what Emergency medicine is like, or the candidates get to network with the current Junior doctors to hear their take on the latest strike, it can be a valuable experience all around, identifying promising candidates and showing current workers what the next wave is like. A well-crafted experience would be a great benefit to those who can’t travel for work experience, and it IS a lower barrier of entry for those who can’t afford access to more prestigious work experiences. You could also do a dozen of these courses and try to find which business and role really speaks to you. But if it’s an uninspired module with two videos and a quiz with a logo slapped on top, it becomes just another step with no benefit. In an applicant's place, I’d do every one, because if I didn't, I’d get leapfrogged by those that have substantial in-person work experience. Not because it’s actually valuable.
Maybe I’m a cynic, and thousands of young people with little idea of what they want to do in their career will find new paths they never considered through well-crafted digital experiences, and in ten years’ time any company not offering a digital taster of their office life will be considered behind the times, but I don’t think they will. Fostering new talent requires things you just don’t get from “integrating dynamic digital learning opportunities to highlight high potential candidates” (a real quote I lifted from a prominent corporation). It takes good people, dedicated time, matching candidates to culture, and smart investment. We can admit those can’t be accessed exclusively through a webcam, can’t we?