14th May 2010, 01:47 PM
Quote:I agree, although I was mostly trained on commercial jobs, I was lucky. I was on a team of experienced archaeologists who didn't mind training up a newby.
Me too, though in almost all cases, it was in people's job descriptions to train people; that was one of the key reasons that they were supervisors or whatever. Although thinking back, I got plenty of guidance from people who were at the same level as me.
However, my feeling is that most volunteers are not interested in being trained up so that they can get jobs as professionals or work on commercial sites. They are just doing it for interest and fun, which is fair enough. The place I'm working now has taken on a couple of student placements, and members of staff put considerable amounts of time into training them. The last couple of students have been retired people who are going back to retirement. I have no problem with training volunteers/students who are going to be professionals, but if my objective was 'skilling the sector', I would want to somehow concentrate on people who are going to be professionals. I don'k think that many other professions would give internships to people who are not planning on doing the job.