Give recognition to participating employers. Thank the hosts and the school staff who participated.Obtain evaluations from students and their hosts.Provide structured opportunities for students to reflect on their job-shadowing experiences.Document them with photos, as appropriate. Prepare students for their job shadows.Employer recruitment can take time, so an early start is advisable. Based on students’ interests, identify employers to ask to host job shadows.This may be done by teachers, counselors, or career advisors. Collect information on students’ career interests.Solicit their preferences for scheduling and for how the students will be selected. Secure agreement from school administrators and teachers to assist in planning job shadows.Typically, these will be district or school staff and representatives of employers and/or employer associations. Identify the stakeholders needed to assist with implementation.As noted in the Introduction, the following implementation steps should be followed. The work entailed in organizing job shadows can extend over several months. The planning process involves preparing students to get the most from the experience, helping host employees communicate effectively with students, and providing positive experiences for students and the host organization. Successful job shadowing experiences require collaboration, communication, and preparation by several stakeholders. In small organizations, these may be the same person. “Employee” refers to the person in the workplace who hosts the student. In this chapter, “employer” refers to the workplace representative who decides whether to offer job shadow opportunities to students. Transportation and other logistics may vary depending upon the number of students and the schedule of job shadow visits. If more than one employee is available, a rotational job shadow allows students to gather information about multiple careers or multiple perspectives on the same workplace or career.īased on local needs and context, job shadow experiences may be offered to a group of students on a limited number of days or to individual students throughout the school year. Occasionally, job shadows are organized so that students spend part of their time with two or more different employees. Individual shadowing time (including informational interview): 2 – 6 hours.Introductions, welcome, overview of the industry and the employer: 30 minutes.While each job shadow should be tailored to the specific employee and student, a sample agenda for a job shadow would include: Typically lasting between four and eight hours, job shadows are individual student activities. As with other WBL activities, the content and expectations for job shadows should reflect each student’s need for additional information about specific careers. Job shadow experiences are typically made available to students in 10th through 12th grades who have already participated in some career awareness and exploration activities. Which Students Participate in Job Shadows? The students’ primary roles are to identify job shadow opportunities that would be of interest, interact with employees, record observations of careers and workplaces, and reflect on their experiences. Students benefit most from participating in several job-shadowing opportunities, because they are able to compare and contrast the careers and workplaces that are of interest to them. Job shadows are sometimes the first opportunities for students to observe workplaces and have one-on-one interactions with employees, allowing for more in-depth exposure to both careers and work environments. Based on students’ interests in specific careers and/or employers, job shadows can help students learn more about the nature of jobs and work environments as well as the education and training required to enter them.
Job shadows are career exploration activities that place individual students in workplaces to interact and observe one or more employees.
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