A first view from inside

I remember being 14 and doing two weeks of work experience. They struggled to find me a placement, and at the last minute I ended up at the local council, and it was very boring.

I was a very shy fourteen-year-old, walking into a very old building. I remember it being so hot, even in summer, which feels typical of council offices back then. One of the first things I had to do was filing, I think. I finished it quickly, sat down with my book, and started reading, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me at the time.

I learnt the hard way when it was explained to me very quickly. That is not really how the world of work works. Once I finished the task, I was expected to go back to the manager and ask if there was anything else I should be doing. I remember feeling slightly embarrassed and a little surprised. In my head, I had done what I was told. It had not occurred to me that that was only the beginning. There was an expectation that I should make myself visible, show more interest, read the room, and find another way to be useful.

It's funny though. I learned how it worked pretty quickly. I’m guessing most people do, one way or another.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the different things that sit inside working life. Some of them may seem obvious once you know them, but they are not obvious when no one has shown them to you first.

What I learned by accident

You see, unlike most teenagers, I didn’t have a Saturday job. My dad was a very strict Ghanaian man. He had a simple approach: as a child, my job was to read, study, and help around the house rather than spend weekends working a Saturday job.

Of course, there were definite positives to that approach, but it meant I had a big gap when it came to work experience, and I felt that most when I finished university and needed a way into work.

The placements I managed to secure after I graduated were an absolute lifeline. They gave me a really good perspective on the workplace as I didn't have a clear map for how to find and navigate it myself.

So it has been really interesting to see Sainsbury’s announce that it is creating 10,000 work-experience opportunities for 14- to 24-year-olds, particularly in areas with higher youth unemployment. The programme includes school-based work, time in stores, depots and offices, employability sessions and hands-on experience. And obviously, the immediate question I have is whether it will lead to jobs.

Because, the way I see it, 10,000 work-experience placements are not necessarily 10,000 jobs, and it is important to keep that distinction clear. It has made me think about what we mean when we talk about young people being employable. I am thinking of things like confidence, initiative, professionalism and communication skills, which can sound obvious to those of us who have been working a while. Until you are 14 in a local council office, reading your book because you finished the task you were given and do not know any better.

The rules behind the rules

• What does “show initiative” actually mean if nobody has shown you what that looks like?

• How do you know when to interrupt somebody who seems busy?

• How do you know that a task is sometimes not just a task, but an invitation to ask for the next one?

• What does “professional” mean in one particular place, with its own way of speaking, its own unspoken rules, and its own very particular collection of people?

I have started wondering how much of what we call confidence or initiative is actually familiarity.

Not that those things are not real. Obviously, some people are more confident than others. Some people have a natural way of taking up space. Sometimes someone seems to “get it” because they have been in rooms like this before. Or they have grown up around people who know how these rooms work. Or somebody has taken the time to explain the first rule, and then the second rule hiding behind the first one.

I didn't have that kind of exposure in the same way.

My dad didn't think I should have a Saturday job. Other people may have grown up hearing their parents talk about work over dinner, helping in a family business, visiting an office, a shop, a hospital, or a school, knowing what an internship is, or watching an adult send one of those emails that somehow sounds both friendly and terrifyingly competent.

They may arrive at the supposed starting line already knowing some things other people are about to learn, often in public and under pressure.

And then we can be surprisingly quick to turn that difference into something about the person.

One young person is confident. Another is hesitant.

One shows initiative. Another waits to be asked.

One just seems to “get it.”

Maybe they do.

But maybe some of what we are seeing is just that they have been exposed to this before.

What a junior role is for

The Sainsbury’s announcement made me think again about the “no-experience, no-job doom loop.” Employers say young people lack experience; young people need a job to get experience. The cycle repeats itself.

There’s also no shortage of advice for anyone caught in this loop: do a course, improve your CV, build your network, be proactive, demonstrate initiative, learn AI—the list goes on.

Don’t get me wrong, some of this advice is useful, and I have given versions of it myself

But it can make the problem sound as though it sits entirely inside the young person. As though they have simply failed to become employable enough. As though the person who already knows how to behave in the room somehow arrived knowing.

And there is another part of this that I keep coming back to.

It’s no surprise that so much discussion about AI focuses on how organisations might do more with fewer people. At the forefront of those conversations is junior work: the first draft, the initial research, the spreadsheet, the admin, the basic deck, the basic copy.

You can see the logic.

If AI can do it faster, cheaper, and without needing a graduate scheme, why would you not?

Except I keep wondering whether we are looking at those jobs only in terms of what they produce for the organisation.

What else was happening while somebody was doing them?

Maybe a junior role does not only produce research, admin, or a deck that somebody senior will edit anyway. Maybe it also produces a person who slowly learns how a workplace works.

They get the opportunity to watch, try something, and get corrected. They ask a question and may misunderstand something. They sit in a meeting and try to work out what everybody is talking about. They learn that adults at work do not always know what they are doing either, despite some very confident PowerPoint presentations.

Eventually, things that once looked mysterious become obvious.

Or obvious enough.

That’s partly why the Sainsbury’s announcement triggered this blog. Work experience isn’t a substitute for paid junior jobs, and it won’t solve youth unemployment. And I don’t think it should it be reduced to two weeks of filing, shadowing someone too busy to be shadowed, receiving a branded tote bag, snapping a photo for LinkedIn, and, supposedly, becoming “employable.”

Still, it does open a door and a chance to get inside

It’s a chance to glimpse what can’t easily be learned from the outside. Perhaps, for someone already on the inside to take a beat and explain a few of the things they take for granted,

The book

I still think about sitting with my book after I finished that first task, unsure what to do next. Fourteen-year-old Audrey had bought the book simply to fill the empty time, time I didn’t yet realise was part of the experience itself.

Looking back, maybe work experience is not only about preparing someone for a job. It’s also about opening the door to the quiet, often accidental lessons others have been absorbing for years.

So perhaps the question for employers is not just, “What can this young person do for us?” but,

“What are we assuming they already know, and what part can we play in making it easier for them to learn?”