How to help your teen find work experience

Jul 1, 2025
5 min read

Updated: Jul 22

This is just a snippet from The Parents' Guide to Developing Skills and Character. If you’d like the full version, with clear, up-to-date advice, practical tips and actions you can take at home, click below.

Read the full guide: The Parents' Guide to Developing Skills and Character

Work experience covers a range of opportunities, from attending a workplace in person, shadowing or observing a particular person or job role, volunteering, or working remotely. What matters is that your teen gets some first-hand experience of what it's like to work.

Most schools focus on work experience for Years 11 and 13 in the summer term, but your teen can get work experience at any point in the school year. Try not to leave it until the last minute. The best opportunities are competitive and often get snapped up quickly.

Work experience

Traditionally, work experience happens at a place of work where students get real-life, on-site experience. This is usually a one or two week placement, typically in the summer term.

Part of the experience is dressing appropriately for the environment, travelling to and from work, experiencing a full working day, and getting a feel for how different job roles relate to and depend on each other.

While any work experience is great, if your teen has ambitions to do a particular job, it's worth trying to get experience within that sector. It can help them discover more about the industry and realise whether it is or isn't for them, a lesson much better learned sooner than later. Work experience is also a good way to show passion for a subject not usually offered in sixth form, such as architecture, medicine, law or accountancy.

How you can help your teen find work experience:

Speak to your own contacts to see if they can help: friends, family, colleagues and neighbours
Encourage your child to speak with the careers team at school, who often have excellent connections with local and national employers
Contact employers directly and ask, either in person or by email
Get them to apply for a job (Saturdays, evenings, holidays); it may not be their dream job, but it's work experience and they'll learn a lot, as well as earning some money

If your teen is struggling to find a suitable one or two week placement, try a different approach. Perhaps they could ask employers if they could visit for a day, support a particular project, volunteer or work remotely. It's better for your teen to accept a virtual or unpaid role than to get no experience at all.

A young person shadowing an employee at work

Shadowing and observing

If your child is struggling to get work experience, they could approach companies to see if they could observe or shadow an employee. Providing formal work experience takes considerable effort from companies, creating a programme and having staff on hand to run it.

Not all companies have the resources to do this, so letting your teen shadow or observe an employee may be an attractive alternative. It's hit and miss how well the person explains the job along the way, but it does give the chance to shadow someone more senior, something that may not be possible through a traditional placement.

There's unlikely to be much paperwork for a shadowing role, so it'll be up to your child to write up their experience and what they learned. This is an important step, as it could be a long time between shadowing someone and talking about it at interview, and key learning points are easy to forget.

Need inspiration?

Spend the day with a personal assistant or business planning manager
Visit a film or television studio for an application to study media or film
Shadow a nurse at the hospital for an application to study medicine
Shadow a hotel, catering or arcade manager for an insight into the hospitality industry

Even if your child can't get an official shadowing opportunity, they can still gain relevant experience through things open to the public for free, such as:

Watching a debate in Parliament for an application to study politics
Attending local magistrates' court trials for an application to study law
Visiting an exhibition, public talk or museum to show interest in a subject

Volunteering

Volunteering is a fantastic way to gain work experience, give something back to the community and try new things. It could also be the start of a lifelong habit that brings a great sense of fulfilment and is proven to contribute to personal contentment.

Volunteering can happen in short bursts (for example, at a festival for a few days in the holidays) or on a regular basis (such as at a local animal shelter on weekend mornings). Teens can also volunteer from home, preparing flyers, writing blogs or managing social media. It's a great way to connect with local charities, and especially valued by small organisations with limited resources.

Volunteering ideas include:

Local farm, zoo, veterinary practice or animal shelter
Hospital, care home or hospice
Local council or MP's office
Homeless shelter or food bank
Library or museum
Local, national or international charities or political organisations
Festivals or live events
Helplines
Cadets

Virtual work experience and opportunities

Virtual work experience took off during lockdown and it's here to stay. It's a broad term covering any experience that gives young people an insight into a job or industry while at home. Most virtual placements range from half a day to one week, though some last longer depending on the nature of the work and the age of your child.

A teenager taking part in virtual work experience at home

Not all virtual work experience is the same. Some are open to everyone and offer a platform to discover more about a job, watch pre-recorded videos, go on virtual tours and take part in live Q&A sessions.

Others require an application and offer regular online meetings with a supervisor, individual project work, networking sessions, training and video tutorials. Most placements are free, but some charge a small fee.

For more information on virtual work experience, including companies offering it, read our article on virtual work placements.

Part-time work

Don't forget that work experience also counts if your teen is doing weekend, evening or holiday work. A local job is less likely to be closely related to their long-term ambitions and more likely to be practical and close to home (a shop, fast food chain or a bar). There's still real value in these roles: working with others, dealing with the public, working under pressure, working unsocial hours, and seeing how management differs from ground-floor staff.

Depending on the opportunity and how long they've been working, they can develop all sorts of skills. It's worth taking time to chat through which skills they enjoyed developing, which they didn't, and why.

Standing out from others

Your teen will have their own goals and ambitions, but they might need your help working out the steps to achieve them. The Parents' Guide to Developing Skills and Character explains how you can help your teen gain a competitive advantage, mostly by doing things they enjoy. Check it out here.

In it, we explore the top 20 skills sought by interviewers and identify which hobbies help build them. Find out how your teen can spend the summer doing things they enjoy that also develop skills valuable to their future: