Smart career guidance for young people aged 15 and over

Pupils invited to a work experience week during the Easter vacations

A professional "taster week" awaits interested pupils from Jena and the surrounding area during the Easter vacations. In the second edition of the "Internship Week Jena", young people aged 15 and over can get to know eight companies over eight days and discover a wide range of job profiles. Anyone who wants to take part can register free of charge via the Jena Internship Week website. Pupils are asked online about their interests and talents and then automatically assigned to the participating companies. Around 90 local and regional companies are currently registered and 40 one-day internships have already been arranged in eight days. Until the vacations, companies can still add "last minute" offers and participate flexibly for between one and eight days.

"After the successful premiere during the last summer vacation, young people can once again take a look at a wide range of fields of work during the Easter vacation and get to know a potential training company on a day-to-day basis, for example,"

says project manager Daniela Drilltzsch from the Jena Economic Development Agency (JenaWirtschaft). According to Drilltzsch, 110 young people took part last year and completed a total of 132 internship days.

District craftsmen's association and OptNet support the format

In addition to JenaWirtschaft, the Jena/Saale-Holzland district craftsmen's association is also one of the organizers of the new format. According to Manuela Vogt from the "Passgenaue Besetzung" project, the one-day internships are the perfect way to see that there are

"that you don't necessarily need a high school diploma and a degree to realize yourself professionally."

The young people can experience for themselves - without the need for a job interview - how wide-ranging the opportunities in the skilled trades are and how proud they can be to create something with their own hands every day, says Vogt. More than 20 craft businesses are taking part during the Easter vacations.

Nora Kirsten from the OptoNet industry network knows that practical experimentation is also the proverbial "be-all and end-all" in the optics and photonics industry training professions.

"What do precision opticians, physics laboratory technicians or microtechnologists actually do all day? The best way to find out is to do an internship. The photonics companies in Jena are looking forward to welcoming the students and will show them what future topics are being researched and worked on."

Numerous exciting opportunities await the potential trainees of tomorrow during the internship week, including at the companies Numerik, OLPE, Jena-Optronik, 2bspecial and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering.

Internship week as the first step towards the "dream job"

According to Stefan Scholz, Head of the Jena Employment Agency, getting to know people personally is one of the main advantages of the internship week - both for the students and for the companies.

"It is very important for young people to experience everyday working life at first hand so that their expectations of their dream job are as realistic as possible."

And what is the current situation regarding "dream jobs" for young people in Jena? Stefan Scholz, Managing Director of the Jena Employment Agency, knows:

"Basically, you can say that pupils have a very good chance of landing their dream job, as there is a wide range of apprenticeships on offer. There are currently around 450 vacant apprenticeships registered in the city of Jena."

According to Scholz, students should not limit themselves to just one profession, but should also get to know some alternatives, for example by taking part in the Jena Internship Week. Those who took part last year also say that it is worth taking part: 100 percent of the students surveyed said they would recommend the internship week to others.