Job shadowing

gismo · June 2005

Good Morning,
Do any of you see a problem with our company letting a college student shadow one of our EE's for experience? This person will not be getting paid, she just wants to follow our EE around to see how certain things are done in this field. It may only be a couple hours here and there.

Your insight would be appreciated.

safety · June 2005

The only problem I see is how do you know this person isn’t just casing the joint out for a future robbery? It could be that she wants to find out what security measures you have in place and how to foil them, where the most cash is stashed, how to gain access to the stash, etc. I would do a thorough background check on the person before granting them access to the insides of your organization.

HRPager · June 2005

Depending on what kind of field you are in, confidentiality might be an issue also you need to consider.

System · June 2005

We allow college students to participate in an internship program. They do more than follow someone around for mentoring. They perform some of the non-essential functions and possibly sit in on some meetings. We do complete backgrounds on the students as if they were an applicant. It's proven valuable in a few cases where we actually recruited the student. It was like having an employee for a probationary period for free. An internship program may work very well for your firm.

Dutch2 · June 2005

We also allow a few highschool and mostly college students to work a so-called internship; however, we actually hire them and go through all of the hiring procedures for them that we do anyone else and we put them on the payroll at least at mim. wage for the time they are here.
We had a few problems with the "shadow" program and instead found it works best for us to actually assign them tasks to perform while learing the requirements of the position.
Being a financial institution we must be very careful with confidential information of our customers and co-workers.
Good luck...

marc · June 2005

For third parties, we only allow a formalized internship - there are insurance issues that are covered with that sort of thing - we still do background checks because of the nature of our clientele.

We only allow job shadowing for in-house EEs that may be interested in transferring. Must be in good standing and get approval from both supervisors involved.

I rarely allow such things for HR or certain finance functions because of confidentiality. I do allow for an in-depth Q and A session - which so far seems to have worked for those interested.

MS HR · June 2005

does your liability coverage work in this case should the student get hurt in some way????

marc · June 2005

We do have an umbrella liability policy that provides normal coverage. For the work related injury, the interns are covered under the university's Workers Comp insurance, not ours.

We also work with Marriage and Family Therapy Interns, who must carry their own professional liablity insurance.

gismo · June 2005

Thank you for all of your input. I should have also stated that she is the daughter of one of our EE's (a higher up EE), so I don't think the (casing the business) w/b an issue.

She would be helping out our marketing officer with advertising tasks.

Again, thank you.

LivindonSouth · June 2005

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 07-01-05 AT 05:55AM (CST)[/font][br][br]I see no problem with it other than somebody is going to have to babysit her and tug her along during the process and I'm not sure what value that will add to your bottom line. Unless you're a non-profit, the bottom line is, after all, the objective. Disclaimer: This comment does not apply in California where this would be considered 'good PR' for HR x:-).

Job shadowing

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