Development of ICT Skills

Participants in focus groups also tended to highlight the soft skills they had developed over specific vocational skills, but did identify some key areas such as using new equipment and new software and making contact with suppliers.

• I feel like because they have a lot more equipment over there, because they’re a school funded specifically for film, I feel like we learned how to use a lot more equipment and learn that there’s a lot more structure to how you work. We had to be specific about the shots, about the management and all the logistics.

Also I feel like because they really packed those three weeks with as much work as we could possibly do, it gave us the experience of what a very, very fast-paced working environment is like.

And because we have done it, we can say – I’ve done hard work like that before, I can do it again.

Filip • I asked the [fashion] designer a lot of questions. ‘Where do you get these? How do you bring this together?’ He was into millinery and I was so curious to see where to go, and he actually took me to this shop. So if I hadn’t asked him I wouldn’t get that information. So I have the contact details and I can get things shipped out to here. So for working in my field, it was very good. Ellen • I use some of the skills I learned in my job now, basically the administration part of it. When I was over there, it was a good few years ago, they wanted us to interview the employees and then after that it was just admin and I’ve always used that in any job that I’ve had. I’d say I’ve took that skill away. Aoife

Neither survey respondents nor the in-person group identified ICT skills as a strong area of development. Mark, who completed a placement in entrepreneurship, remarked that he was already up to date with many of the ICT tools used in his workplace:

I don’t think I experienced new technologies. Being from a multimedia background, I would have had the exposure to that beforehand. New strategies? I don’t think so. I think maybe just because it was a new environment for me, everything was kind of new there.

The one participant who strongly identified ICT skills as an area of development was Dorota, who used social media and IT skills as part of a business and entrepreneurship placement. She emphasised that as she had no background in IT she found the development of these skills very rewarding.

That time when I got my work placement, people had just started being very active on social media. So that’s why they focused on that, because they wanted to teach us something that will have a big impact soon for the business market. It was amazing, like at that time I wasn’t really open for the social media side of e-commerce. I was like, why? I couldn’t understand that. So what [the company owner] explained was that social media will have impact and how it’s important for us to know how to apply that, for the future, as a successful company or entrepreneur or even an employee. So that was magnificent. He taught us how to create and how to build websites. What goes on from the IT design side, everything. And then they chose first second and the third place of the most creative idea – with the bigger chances to sell successfully. My idea was funny, but actually I got third place! To design websites, for me all the skills were new. I never was an IT person. So for me to get to actually know how to create stuff, and know how to operate IT – that was amazing.