Working (experience) title
I recently took my girlfriend’s nephew for a week’s work experience at Deliveroo. I was personally very excited for him as I wish I’d of had this kind of opportunity when I was his age (unfortunately I did my work experience on a bread delivery van), and what a fantastic and exciting company to get to see the inside of.
Meet Joe.
Joe is 18 (I know, painful isn’t it). Joe likes design. Joe is ginger.
So Joe is in his second year at college studying Graphic Design. He is very interested in lots of aspects of design, photography and animation and is thinking about going off to university in September to pursue this.
I offered him the chance to come and spend a week working at Deliveroo HQ, to see how different design disciplines work together within the same team and to put some of the skills he’s learnt at college into real world application.
Preparation
The first thing that I underestimated was the amount of effort I’d have to put in to make sure he’d get the maximum out of his time here. A week is not that long, especially around here, and I wanted him to get a good sense of all aspects of the design team.
I harassed the brand team for briefs so that he could work on something and have a brief to follow as any other member of the team would. He worked on a few things, all for different channels and requiring very different styles.
I also spent time writing product briefs for him so that he could try his hand at something he’d never done before: prototyping. All of this took time that I hadn’t previously considered but was all worth it in the end.
Critique
Something I found difficult whilst Joe was here was giving him constructive feedback. It sounds strange as it’s something we do day in, day out with our peers, but when working with someone who is still learning their craft, it’s more about encouragement and giving them the help needed to improve and hone their skill.
I feel it may have been tough at first for Joe, as it’s not easy knowing what’s expected of you. I tried to allow him the space to work things out on his own but be there when needed. Something that we do often around here is to continually ask why?, and this is a trick I tried with Joe. There’s no right or wrong answer, but if you can’t answer then the likelihood is you need to re-think your approach. The key learning is that it teaches you to consider the weight of the decisions you make.
Projects
One of the projects I set for Joe was to prototype some sections of the iOS app. I decided to show him how to use Principle as he is into animation and showing how you can quickly animate UI elements seemed like a solid skill for him to have a go at.
What he produced was great. I’d shown him how to use most of the primary features and he went off and made the list view and menu pages, including screen transitions. I was really impressed and he said that this was what he’d enjoyed most about the week.
Joe was great to work with if only for a short period. He worked hard, got to work on some fun stuff and has hopefully gained some valuable insight into working life even if it did tire his young soul a bit.
Final thoughts
A piece of advice for anyone seeking to do work experience would be to listen and be receptive, but don’t be afraid to ask questions even if you think they might be trivial. You are there to get the maximum out of the experience and you won’t do that by sitting quietly unsure of what you’ve been asked to do.
For anyone in my position who has the chance to offer someone that experience, I’d fully recommend it. You will have to put in the effort in order to reap the rewards but I can assure you it’s worth it. One thing I learnt during this week that I’d have done differently would be to have multiple people in place to help — you can only do so much on your own (assuming you have you regular work load too). I did this towards the end of the week and got other members of the team to help Joe which he was grateful for, as was I.
