Students get feel for ‘corporate vibe’ through Career Launcher
They haven’t settled on a college or a major yet, but two students from The Episcopal School of Jacksonville have had a taste of what it’s like to work at a Fortune 500 company.
Ana Timpke, 17, and Bond Magevney, 16, were part of a group of 18 students in Episcopal’s Career Launcher program, created by the Alumni Association to help students explore careers.
Episcopal partnered with The Adecco Group, a global workforce solutions company. For two days in June, the students shadowed Adecco employees, working in healthcare, technology, engineering, finance and legal.
Timpke, an Old San Jose resident and a senior, spent her time shadowing people in marketing.
“It was really interesting. I got a lot of insight. I spent time with people who use marketing in healthcare and finance and got to see how they were different,” Timpke said.
She was surprised at the role that technology plays in marketing. The people who work in healthcare showed her what they do on the website.
“I’m pretty tech savvy but I didn’t realize how much goes into it,” she said. “It’s really time-consuming.”
Jason Provost, who works in finance, shared his own career path and some of the career options the students might have.
“It was nice to hear his story,” Timpke said. “He gave us good advice to help us figure out what you want to do.”
Magevney, an Ortega resident, will be a junior this fall and is leaning towards a career in business or finance. He’s just now starting to look at colleges.
“I saw the application on the school website and told my parents about it. I was interested to see what life was like in a major corporation,” Magevney said.
Magevney shadowed David Ertrachter, who gave him an overview of the history of Adecco and how the company works and introduced him to people in the finance department.
“What surprised me was the influence accounting had in the workings of the corporation,” Magevney said. “And how important it is having a background in accounting coming out of school.”
Magevney also said he liked the corporate vibe at Adecco. “I felt like Adecco had a nice community. They know each other pretty well and seem to work well together. They weren’t just faces in a crowd.”
Both Timpke and Magevney said they thought it was time well spent and would recommend it to other Episcopal students.
The visit was arranged through Rich Thompson, regional head of human resources for North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland at The Adecco Group. His son, Jack, is a student at Episcopal.
“Work-based learning is one of the best ways young people can prepare for their future careers,” Thompson said. “We encourage more employers to partner with educators on initiatives, like Career Launcher, that enable students to gain real world experiences ahead of entering the workforce, while also bringing fresh perspectives – and potentially future talent – to companies.”
By Lilla Ross
Resident Community News
(3 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)
Loading... 
