Los Gatos High School students learned how to manage everything from a small business to corporate communications Monday when local businesses hosted them for a job shadowing day.
Having the day off school for staff development, 300 students spent anywhere from an hour to a full day shadowing professionals at 61 companies such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lockheed Martin, or at local businesses like Sara’s Southern Kitchen. Some also returned to Fisher Middle School to experience life there as staff members instead of students.
“It’s a very unique opportunity to see what it’s like in the working world, because a lot of these kids may have jobs at a local coffee shop or Jamba Juice or something, but they really don’t know what to expect in the working world post-college or post-high school,” said Heather LeRoy, a parent at the school who spearheaded the effort.
LeRoy said students are connected to different companies for the shadowing day based on a lottery, since not all companies can host an equal number of students. But she said any student who’s interested in participating in the event will be connected to a company that wants to host them.
“That’s the great thing about this is they’re young and this is free, and so it’s just so easy to just get one data point to see what life could be like in this role. It’s just that exposure that’s so valuable,” LeRoy said.
Sara Williams, owner of Sara’s Southern Kitchen, said she hosted several students and spoke to them about both the tax-related and financial side of running a restaurant and the front-of-house hosting and serving side of the business.
As someone who had to learn about managing finances for a small business on the fly, Williams said she wished she had the opportunity to learn those fundamentals in school.
“I think it’s really under-taught, things like finances and in business accounting, and just small business stuff like that,” she said.
Jennifer Temple, chief communications officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), said the company introduced the student job-shadowers to the world of communications, public relations and marketing.
Temple said the students got to experience being on camera and practice reading lines from a teleprompter and met with public relations professionals to hear about the work that they do. They also learned about the path to a career in the communications field, including building their own “brand” to help them when applying for jobs or internships.
“It’s never too early to learn how to present yourself on LinkedIn or how to write your bio,” Temple said.
Temple has stayed in touch with students who have participated in HPE’s job shadow event last year, and helped answer questions for them about summer internships and applying to college.
“I think they felt like it was a very good overview, and armed them with not only questions to ask as they think about potential careers available to them but also with some deliberate next steps they can take in pursuing a career in communications,” she said.
Temple said she wished she had been able to attend a similar event when she was in high school, since most often students can only experience corporate culture once they’re doing internships in college.
“I don’t think it’s ever too early to contemplate different career pursuits,” she said.