AS work experience

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One of my clients asked me if we would be able to have his son for two weeks work experience. I said we would love to have him. At my company we assign each work experience student a mentor and he asked me to be his son’s.

From earlier chats with the client I knew his son is 14 has quite server AS and attends a special school but is very clever.

I am severely dyslexic (I went to special school to) as well as I have very mild AS (the client does know – it came up in a conversation about his son). I am an architectural assistant (trainee architect) and about half way though the 7 year course

I was just wondering if any one here had any advice?

I suppose I should tell you a little about the company

We are a firm of architects with an international reputation. The company is a very friendly and accepts people for who they are. We believe in fairly distributing profit each employee gets a large bonus each year; we even give bonuses to some work experience students. The company attitudes to employ the very best people work around their problems. For example lots of architects are dyslexic so we employ a technical writer to proof read / rewrite their work, as well as we have a dedicated tidy-upper to help organise them. We have no rules, job titles, hour we need to work etc. We are free to work how we want.

If he is coming from a structured school environment do you think it would be better to give him some more rigid rules? - It is quite hard for people entering the company to figure out who is responsible for things and how long they need to work etc.

I first started in architectural practice at his age. I still know my mentors and they gave me my first job in architecture, helped me with applying to university and even now I still give them a ring when I need some ones advice. I found it great that they treated me like an architectural assistant rather then a child with special needs. I wonder whether by writing this post I am taking away form him the thing that I found so good in work experience? Should I just let it be a fluid process?

Wow, where do you work and can I get a job there?

By all means, treat him like an employee instead of a child. If he's got the skill (and he's anything like I was at that age), he'll love it. Things might be a bit rocky at first while he's learning what's expected - maybe, instead of establishing a set of stricter rules, just be very clear and direct with your instructions. Personally, I think you should give him whatever accommodations you would give a regular employee. Ask him if there are any specific issues or sensitivities he's worried about - often there are simple fixes. (One that would save me a ton of headache is just to be allowed to work with headphones on.)

Anyway, just my two cents. I wish all companies were this openminded.

Did you go forward with the work experience session yet? If so, how did it go?