Junior Achievement and Intuit Launch New JA Job Shadow, a Learning Experience that Gives Teens an Up-Close Look at the World of Work

Today, Junior Achievement USA and Intuit, maker of TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Mint, are announcing the launch of the new JA Job Shadow®. JA Job Shadow is a comprehensive experience that helps students design an individualized career path. Supporting blended as well as self-guided activities, JA Job Shadow provides a design-thinking structure for career exploration.

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“JA Job Shadow gives teens the chance to explore career fields they might not otherwise consider at a time in their academic journey when they are starting to think about life after high school,” said Jack E. Kosakowski, President and CEO of Junior Achievement USA. “With the support of Intuit, this learning experience will help teens make more informed decisions about their career goals and the educational path that makes the most sense given their aspirations.”

Intuit’s design thinking process – called Design for Delight – consists of a multi-step process of research, interviews, and observations, where students are taught to deeply focus on a problem, use empathy to identify its causes, and how to methodically create a solution. As part of the partnership, Junior Achievement and Intuit created a new informal learning tool, called the D4D App, where students can access a step-by-step review of the most common tools and techniques of design thinking to help them along their learning journey both in or out of the classroom.

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“At Intuit, we use design thinking principles every day to solve the toughest customer problems. Together with Junior Achievement, we have been able to create a learning experience that gives students a real-world problem-solving application to build the skills they will need to be successful in their future jobs”, said Dave Zasada, Vice President, Corporate Responsibility, Intuit, “We can’t wait to see what solutions these amazing, future entrepreneurs will create.”

As part of the JA Job Shadow experience, students develop a deep understanding of their talents, interests, and values through a career interest assessment. The result is a broad list of career possibilities. Through informational interviews, students narrow down the list to identify their top potential career opportunities. They interact with professionals in a workplace site visit and during a multi-hour job shadow experience in a career area of interest. Reflection and analysis move students toward their target career or back to their list to explore another option.

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