( fake name will be Jim )
Last year I was a mentor for a school program, and one of my mentees told me about a very interesting summer internship experience they had. They were working for a small to medium-sized general contractor in which they were promised an opportunity to learn valuable skills and get by the end be able to take on small change order projects needed on their sites. Jim was very excited and was telling everyone how he was finally going to get some real upper management skills, it was their whole summer plan.
On Jim’s first week they ran through an orientation which was normally pretty boring but once that was over Jim was expecting a very exciting summer. Jim got put into estimating, which is the backbone of the industry but not something he was interested in, he was told that it was only for the first week to learn the process. One week turned into 2 months, and the reason was that they were too busy to have Jim doing anything else, they were not making any time for Jim to join on the projects he was stuck in an office all summer. and last month his motivation was at an all-time low so he ended up leaving 4 weeks before the intended end week.
overall it was the lack of compensation that drove them away from this job and the industry as a whole, they ended up changing majors to general business and have stopped looking into construction jobs which is unfortunate.
