For student Caleb from Banbridge, a Career ready mentor and internship with Alternative Heat opened up a new set of options for the future.
“Before starting the Career Ready programme I was quiet and lacked the confidence to make my voice heard.” says Caleb.
Caleb, a student at Newbridge Integrated College in Banbridge, was paired with mentor Danny, who works as Head of Commercial for Alternative Heat – an offsite fabrication specialist. After mentoring and a paid internship with Danny, Caleb has seen a change in himself.
“I feel that now I’m far more confident. I can speak and be heard in a way that I simply couldn’t before I started the programme. I can now say with certainty that I am a different man than I was just 12 months ago.”
An insight to the world of work
Caleb had discussed his uncertainty about his future path with mentor Danny. So, they set out to experience as many different areas of the business as possible during his internship.
“My internship was absolutely incredible,” he says. “I was able to see the entire process of building plant-rooms from start to finish.”
“I began by reading company contracts, then seeing daily site logs from across Europe, before finally visiting the fabrication building in Banbridge to see plant-rooms being built in real-time. I also got to work in marketing for the company, creating ‘meet the team’ posts for the company’s women’s Gaelic football team, ahead of a charity match.
“My internship helped me to develop confidence in both my work and my ability to fit into an office environment. I have never really spent any time in an office before now, so it gave me a much better feel for what it is like to work somewhere like this.
“It also helped me to develop IT skills; building life skills and using tools that we rarely get to use in school but are key to any workplace, such as Excel.”
Opening up possibilities
This experience has helped Caleb to rethink the options open to him in the future.
“Before my internship I had no idea what I wanted to do,” he says. “And as much as I still haven’t settled on what I want to do, I no longer feel pigeon-holed into one path that I wasn’t even sure of to begin with. I now see that there are lots of options.
“My internship opened my mind much more to an office job, but it has also shown me the place that creativity has in the workplace, which has opened my eyes to something media-based for the future – something that I would never have otherwise thought of.”
The benefit of a mentor
Caleb also found the support of his mentor, Danny, really helpful during his internship.
“Danny helped to prepare me in many ways,” he says. “Having a mentor gave me a good role model for how to act in a professional setting, which is something that I otherwise wouldn’t have had.
“Danny showed me that despite the path that I have taken thus far, my options are still very open. Before this I felt that I had limited my options but now I know that is not true.
“Career Ready has broadened my horizons massively by giving me a better insight into just how many different paths there are to reach success.”
