by In the First Steps Career Survey, we ask “If you have had a job, internship, or volunteer position, what do you think you learned from your experience? Check as many as apply.” So far, 5,668 of the over 8,000 survey respondents have provided answers to this question, based on a job, internship or volunteer position. Of these, 427 respondents have provided answers based on an internship.
Answers across all types of experiences reflect the value of these early work experiences, as shown in Chart 1 below and in Table 1 at the end of this post. Respondents were most likely to indicate that they learned about “career options (what type of careers I might like)” and developed “Basic foundation skills (such as working with others or professionalism)” and others also indicated additional skill types, including applied academic skills, higher-level professional skills and career-specific skills.
As expected, respondents with internships are especially likely to indicate that they learned about career options and developed a variety of skills; but the important take-away is that respondents with all types of work experience were also likely to indicate that they learned about career options and gained skills.
Over one hundred respondents offered additional comments:
About types of work experience: Some respondents commented to describe informal volunteer and work experience: such as helping out a father in construction work; volunteering at church; helping out at a local youth-oriented business; working on music projects; and other less-formal work experiences.
About skills learned: some mentioned about the hard lessons of the workplace: that not all co-workers will be friendly; that some customers can be hard-to-deal-with, and that some early jobs are not related to your future career goals. More than one commented “I learned what career options I DON’T want.”
About specific skills and/or general professional skills: Other respondents commented about specific skills they have gained, such as basic mechanics, construction skills, childcare, or working with people with disabilities. Others commented about general professional lessons learned:
- “What it’s like to have a boss and how to be a leader.”
- “Being responsible and paying attention to others.”
- “I have learned to work with people, to be a hard worker, and to take criticism.”
- “What to do when things have to have perfection and when you are running out of time.”
The positive results of this question are supported by other questions in the survey. As described in other analyses of these survey results, respondents who have had work experiences are more confident about their future careers and give themselves higher ratings overall in a variety of career-related skills.
ABOUT THE SURVEY: The First Steps Career Survey is a project of the Skills Library. The survey began in 2012 and has over 8,000 responses from all around the U.S., Canada and internationally. If you would like to use the survey with your students or summer program participants, you can find the link on the skillslibrary.com home page or here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZLX3FY5
| Table 1: If you have had a job, internship or volunteer position, what did you learn from this experience? (Check all that apply) | ||
| Among respondents with any work experience | Among respondents with internship experience | |
| Career options (what type of careers I might like) | 56% | 70% |
| Basic foundation skills (such as working with others or professionalism) | 50% | 69% |
| Career-specific skills (such as childcare, cooking or computer skills) | 42% | 61% |
| Higher-level professional skills (such as project management, creative thinking, or leadership) | 31% | 51% |
| Applied academic skills (such as how to use writing, reading, or math in a workplace) | 28% | 44% |
| None of the above | 15% | 6% |
