For Employers - Connecting With Youth
There is no one best way to inform young people. For that reason, we have included a variety of strategies for your consideration. Choose the activities that best suit you and your business. If you are interested in hosting or participating in an activity, contact your local schools or school board offices.
Suggested Strategies
- Display for Customer Waiting Area
- Job Shadowing
- Work-Site Visits
- Cooperative Education and Work Experience Programs
- Demonstrating Practical Applications of School Learning
- Giving Presentations in Schools
- Displays and Demonstrations
- Career Fairs
- Creating Your Own Resources
Display for Customer Waiting Area
The Canadian Automotive Repair and Service (CARS) Council has created a variety of career awareness resources. The easiest way to use these resources is to make some of them available to your customers in your Waiting Room. It will provide them with something interesting to read while they are waiting.
Please visit the Order Form section of this website to obtain these materials.
"Job shadowing" is the name usually given to an experience in which a student spends a day with a worker, following or "shadowing" him or her throughout a workday. The workers in such a program are expected to continue with their regular jobs, but to explain to the students what they are doing and allow them to see the work up close. The students are observers; they are not expected to do any work. Many schools have job-shadowing programs of some kind. The Take Your Kids to Work program is a good example.
Organizing a work-site visit is an excellent way to interest young people and their parents in the motive power repair and service field. Such events have the advantage of attracting people who are already interested in learning more about the industry. They also provide the added benefit of giving your business a higher profile in the community and giving people an accurate picture of the industry.
Cooperative Education and Work Experience Programs
Cooperative Education and Work Experience programs are different from Job Shadowing in that they involve having students work alongside your employees. In both cases, the students have already acquired relevant skills in school or elsewhere.
The great value of these programs to students is that they get practical experience to go along with their school experience.
Demonstrating Practical Applications of School Learning
Students often have difficulty understanding the reasons why they are asked to learn some things in school.
You are in a very good position to be able to show how many school topics are directly related to work in the automotive repair and service field.
Examples are included in the following list.
Some of these relate to specific subjects while others represent more general skills that are related to Essential Skills. You will be able to think of many more.
- Principles of combustion and heat related to engines
- Electrical principles in electrical and electronic systems
- Chemistry in the combination of two soft substances to create a very hard substance in body fillers
- Chemistry in emissions control
- Gears and other mechanical connections
- Friction in brake systems and elsewhere
- The use of computers everywhere
- Geometry in the set-up of lasers in paint shops
- Mathematics in invoices and financial documents
- Communication and people skills in customer service
- Reading and finding information in maintenance manuals
- Teamwork skills everywhere
- Problem solving in diagnostics
- Decision making everywhere
- On-going learning and upgrading.
The person who does a presentation on this kind of topic should be someone who does work relevant to the subject. For example, a technician would be most appropriate for technology and science classes, while business classes would benefit more from someone dealing with the business side of your operation. Both could address the use of mathematics in the workplace.
Giving Presentations in Schools
Giving presentations is an excellent way to inform young people about work in the motive power repair and service industry. If you are interested, inform local schools that you or someone else from your business would be willing to talk with students.
It is very important that presentations be given by people who are not only well-informed, but also comfortable with doing this. See the Tips for Presenters section for some suggestions on making effective presentations. Sample presentation activities are also provided.
Whether these take place at career fairs, school career days, the local shopping mall or in your own business, displays and demonstrations are excellent ways to inform the public and to show off the expertise of workers in the industry.
Possible displays could include:
- The process of repair and service from the time the customer contacts the business to the time when the work is completed and the vehicle is returned
- The diagnostic process
- The repair and service process
- How automotive systems work and what can go wrong
Demonstrations that could be offered are:
- Diagnosing a problem
- Tuning an engine
- Performing any service operation
- Replacing parts in any automotive system
- Using specific diagnostic and repair tools
A good location for demonstrations is a college or other training facility which has the proper equipment. Younger students could be invited to visit that location to see the demonstration(s).
Observers love to be able to touch things. Where possible, give them this opportunity. Be careful, though, and watch what they do. The last thing you want is to have a tool disappear or have someone injured from mishandling specialized equipment.
Career fairs are usually organized on a large scale within a school board or a region. They attempt to include a full range of occupations so that young people can learn about as many as they want.
A career fair is an excellent place to showcase your business as a representative of the industry. This is a win-win-win situation:
- The industry benefits from your efforts to present a realistic image of the field
- Students and parents benefit from receiving this information
- Your business benefits from a high profile in the community
- Large career fairs often attract thousands of people, young and old.
You can create customized information for your business that showcases your own workers. Such resources would have the triple benefit of informing your customers, adding to the morale of your staff and raising your company profile.
Some businesses display photographs (or even caricatures!) of all their staff members, with their job titles. You could take this one step further by including comments from each employee about the work that he or she does.