You can watch someone do a job for three days and still miss most of it. The decisions, the training that got them there, the setbacks, and what they actually like about the work rarely show up on the floor. So today you plan a real workplace interview: five pathway-focused questions, a named person you will ask, and a write-up shape ready for when the conversation happens.

Three terms you will use while you plan and write up the interview.

Start with Conor's draft question list below, because it is easier to spot a weak question in someone else's list than in your own. Label each line as a strong pathway question, meaning one that opens up education or training, a challenge, an opportunity or what the person enjoys, or as surface and weak. When the class is ready, the model is revealed and you can see where you differed.

Your own five questions should look like the strong ones on that list, not the surface ones, so check you have covered education or training, a challenge, an opportunity, what they enjoy and what they do not enjoy before you lock the plan.

Then open (or create) your Workplace Interview Plan document in the Strand 2.2 folder of your Digital Portfolio, the cloud folder where you keep the work from this part of the course (Google Doc or Word). If no template is there, start a blank document with that exact title and write:

• Who you will interview (role and organisation; first name is enough), why that person, and how you will make contact
• Five pathway questions covering education and training, a challenge or setback, an opportunity taken, what they enjoy, and what they do not enjoy day to day
• One planned follow-up prompt you will use if they give a short answer
• When and where the interview will happen, or the date by which you will have asked

Also open (or create) your Workplace Interview Write-up document in the same Strand 2.2 folder with these headings ready: who and when; pathway and training; challenges; opportunities; enjoyment and day-to-day reality; three things I could not have learned by watching alone. If you have already had the conversation, fill the write-up now. If not, leave the headings in place and complete them after the interview.

Open the five questions you just wrote in your Workplace Interview Plan.

• Star the one that watching on placement could never answer. Tell the person beside you (or note quietly for yourself) what you still assume about that role that a ten-minute conversation might overturn.
• Which of your five questions are you most tempted to skip if the person seems busy, and why is that probably the one worth protecting?

Optional Digital Portfolio note in your Workplace Interview Plan: one line on what you most want this conversation to settle for you.

Optional stretch: add a sixth question that only this specific organisation could answer (a local service users face, a seasonal pressure, a qualification this workplace funds). Then write or rehearse your first-contact line asking for ten minutes. Keep it short, name why them, and offer two time options.