新興概念:網絡實習交易所

When Nick Simmons’s teenage son came home from school with a request to provide work experience to a classmate, he came up with a cunning response that inspired the website he has just launched.

尼克•西蒙斯(Nick Simmons，見上圖)十幾歲的兒子放學回家時向他提出了一個要求：給他的一位女同學找實習工作。對此，西蒙斯想出了一個巧妙的應對，並且由此產生靈感，在不久前創建了一個網站。

“I rolled my eyes and agreed, but on one condition,” he recalls. “My son needed a placement too, and when I learnt what her father did, I emailed politely and asked if he would be interested in reciprocating. We ended up creating two internships that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.”

“我想了想同意了，但有一個條件，”他回憶道，“我兒子也需要一份實習工作，當我瞭解他同學的父親做什麼工作後，我禮貌地給這位父親發了一封電郵，問他是否有興趣爲我的兒子找一份實習工作。我們最終創造了兩個原本不會存在的實習生崗位。”

Neither placement was typical nor easy to find in a school dominated by parents who were bankers and lawyers. Mr Simmons offered the schoolgirl an insight into his work as a graphic designer, while his son spent a week with the head of an international policy think-tank.

在這所父母大多爲銀行家和律師的學校裏，這兩份實習工作並不常見，找起來也不容易。西蒙斯爲那位女生提供了了解他平面設計師工作的機會，他的兒子則在一家國際政策智庫的負責人手下工作了一週時間。

Like most people of his generation, Mr Simmons’s own teenage work experience amounted to little more than some weekends working in a pub for money. But today, he recognises the pressures parents and their children are under to understand more and earlier in life about the world after education.

與他這代人的多數人一樣，西蒙斯十幾歲時候的工作經驗只不過是週末在酒吧工作賺錢。但如今，他意識到父母和子女都面臨壓力，要更多更早地瞭解畢業後的世界。

“It’s a given now for schools, on university applications and for jobs,” he says. “All the statistics are out there. Employers say that work experience is almost more important than the grade they achieved in their exams.”

“現在這是上學、申請大學和找工作所必需的，”他表示，“所有數據都明明白白。企業表示，工作經驗幾乎比他們在考試中得到的分數還要重要。”

He trawled the web to see whether there were any useful sites to help find placements, but found few had many postings and most were “pseudo employment agencies” targeting people already in their 20s to offer internships as a cheap alternative to hiring staff full-time.

他在網上努力搜尋了一番，看看是否有有用的網站可以幫助找到實習工作，但他發現發佈很多職位信息的網站很少，多數是“假冒的職業介紹所”，針對的是已經20多歲的年輕人，向他們提供廉價的實習崗位，以取代聘用全職員工。

Over the past four years, he instead developed in his spare time , his own online service, using his design expertise and paying coders to write the software needed for messaging, database management and security.

於是，過去4年，他利用閒暇時間開發了他的在線服務網站，發揮他的設計專長，並付費給程序員編寫信息發佈、數據庫管理以及安全所需的軟件。

The closest model he found was dating sites. But he is using the same principle of matchmaking for a very different purpose. His vision is to encourage and facilitate family-to-family swaps, primarily with a social purpose: to create opportunities and avoid the awkwardness of children spending time at their own parents’ workplaces.

他找到的最接近的模式是交友網站。但他在利用相同的配對原則實現不同的目的。他的設想是鼓勵和方便家庭與家庭之間交換實習工作，主要是帶着一個社會目的：創造機會，同時避免孩子們在自己父母工作的地方實習的尷尬。

“There are no openly offered work experience slots,” he says. “Who would want to take it on unless they were coerced by family or friends? We can generate them.” Listing and search — which can be done by location and job category — will be free, although he plans to charge an annual membership fee of £24 to cover development and marketing costs.

“現在沒有公開提供的實習機會，”他表示，“除非家人或朋友強迫，否則誰願意接受這種工作？我們可以創造這樣的機會。”登記和搜索（可以根據地點和工作種類搜索）將是免費的，不過他計劃向會員收取24英鎊的年費，以彌補開發和營銷成本。

During a pilot phase recently, he signed up nearly 500 placements, with each school student seeking work experience required to offer one in exchange with parents or close family or friends. Given the cosmopolitan nature of London, where the pilot was promoted, the postings span 17 countries.

在最近的試運營階段，他簽約了近500個實習崗位，每個試圖尋找實習機會的學生都需要由他們的家長、近親或朋友提供一份工作來交換。鑑於倫敦（試運營推出的地方）的大都市特點，該網站提供的職位遍及17個國家。

Not everyone is convinced that the initiative will make work experience easier and fairer. “It troubles me,” says Tony Watts, a veteran careers adviser and academic. “I can see its attraction at an individual level but it provides a further reinforcement of the ways in which current pressures for internships foster elitism and privilege, and inhibit social mobility and social justice.”

並非所有人都相信，這項計劃會讓實習變得更爲容易和更爲公平。“這讓我擔心，”資深職業顧問、學者託尼•瓦茨(Tony Watts)表示，“從個人角度來看它頗具吸引力，但它進一步強化了當前找實習工作的壓力催生的精英主義和特權，而且會阻礙社會流動和社會公平。”

Mr Simmons counters that alongside more conventional and professional jobs in finance, law and marketing, MyInternSwap includes offers in yoga, farming and a fish-and-chip shop. He also has plans for an “orphan scheme” that would allow larger employers to offer placements as matches for those seeking work experience whose parents cannot provide reciprocal slots.

西蒙斯反駁稱，除了金融、法律和營銷領域等更傳統和專業的工作，MyInternSwap還提供瑜伽、農業和炸魚薯條店的工作。他還計劃推出一個“孤兒計劃”，讓規模較大的企業爲那些希望尋找實習機會、但他們的父母無法提供交換實習崗位的人提供實習機會。

Tristram Hooley, professor of career education at the University of Derby in the UK, says: “New technologies can loosen and extend networks to a wider group of people but . . . there is clearly a risk this will only permit access to the relatively privileged. With any app the biggest challenge is to get it used at all.”

英國德比大學(University of Derby)職業教育教授特里斯特拉姆•胡利(Tristram Hooley)表示：“新技術能夠爲更多人開放並擴大網絡但……顯然這可能只會向相對有特權的階層開放。任何一款應用最大的挑戰是真正讓人用起來。”

Practicality and equity aside, the website offers at least some hope to create more transparency and opportunities in a world that remains obscure to most teenagers.

把實用性和平等放一邊，該網站至少會給一些人帶來希望：在這個多數青少年仍很懵懂的世界，它可以提供更多透明度和機會。