Work Experience, Placements and Internships

Steve Rook

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137462015
• eBook ISBN: 9781350315259
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

This book provides students and graduates with a concise guide to work experience, placements and internships. It explores the full range of opportunities in key graduate sectors and offers support for each stage of the journey, from finding appropriate opportunities and applying for posts to developing a strategy and making the most of a placement. This is an indispensable resource for anyone applying for placements, internships and graduate jobs. It will also be a valuable resource for careers advisors and staff on employability, personal development and career planning modules.

Chapter 1

Why experience matters

Contents

• Learning how to sing

• What is experience?

• What’s in it for employers?

• What’s in it for you?

• Why experience has grown in importance

• Your first steps

• What to do now

Useful links

On the web

The HE Careers Services Unit: www.hecsu.ac.uk – Look up ‘The Impact of Work Experiences on HE Student Outcomes’

www.agr.org.uk – See the graduate recruitment news

On Twitter

Graduate Prospects:
@Prospects

#graduateskills

Learning how to sing

Whether you’re a singer, dancer, lawyer or judge, experience is the oil that keeps your career on track. It helps you identify interesting careers, develop your skills and promote what you have to offer.

What is experience?

Employment experience is any paid or unpaid activity which helps you develop your employment-related skills. When you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t be too proud to get your hands dirty with any reasonable, legal and ethical roles whatever they involve, wherever they’re based and whatever the pay. Then, hopefully, as you build your CV and develop your skills you’ll soon start earning a decent wage.

“Experience is the oil that keeps your career on track.”

What’s in it for employers?

Experience is incredibly valuable to employers because it demonstrates your skills, commitment and knowledge and therefore your ability to succeed in the workplace i.e. your employability.

Laura Lodwick, Operations Manager, BJSS Limited

We look for candidates who have a good academic background but we are especially attracted to those who also have a wealth of experience – people who have gone out of their way to get wider experience and some general business awareness.

What’s in it for you?

Experience can help you as follows:

Research a role

Get a real-life understanding of particular careers, roles and sectors. You won’t get this from a thousand books and websites. Of course, you may not be able to get experience in the exact roles you want to enter, but any related experience will give you a deeper understanding of sectors and how they link to your goals and aspirations.

Develop your skills

Enhance the specific skills you’ll need in your career, be it through study, hobbies, volunteering, work or internships. However, you will inevitably develop more relevant and marketable skills by gradually building up your employment portfolio to include experience which is closely linked to the role you want to enter.

Build contacts

Get to know key people such as fellow workers, teammates, supervisors, clients, customers, online contacts or just strangers in the corridors of power.

Undertake the experience required

Volunteering and working during your study may also be of use in building up the minimum experience that many employers demand. For example, if you spent your vacations for the last three years in the front office of a local theatre, you could legitimately argue that this constitutes the two years of experience required for a particular job in customer service.

Open doors

The fifth key benefit of experience is that, once you get your foot in the door of an organisation, you can talk your way into even better opportunities. For example:

• If you’re liaising with a local charity in a voluntary role, you could ask them if they have any openings themselves.

• If you’re working at a supermarket and a local estate agent walks in and asks where you keep the peas, you can ask her if she’s got five minutes sometime for a chat about her job.

Steve Rook, author of this guide

I only fully appreciated the full value of experience when I was in my thirties (I’m a slow learner!). I’d done scores of jobs but they’d meant nothing more to me than a pay packet at the end of the week (we used to get paid in little brown envelopes).

At the time I was running my own business, recruiting teachers from Australia to work in the UK, and I came across the role of University Careers Advisers. I immediately thought the job was fantastic so I decided to give it a shot myself. Only, instead of just sending out a million applications (and getting a million rejections), I decided to develop a strategy involving experience and using my networks. This is how I got my foot in the door:

• I liaised even more closely with the careers advisers I already knew and volunteered to help them with their students.

• I discussed their roles.

• One of them offered to help me with applications and offer me a reference.

• I got a part-time job in the UK in a relatively uncompetitive role.

• I got the job and the rest is history!

Without the experience I organised, I wouldn’t have got the help I needed and my applications would have been poor – they completely made the difference!

Why experience has grown in importance

A greater focus on skills

Since the early 1960s, the UK student body has expanded and diversified beyond all recognition.¹ Recruiters have adapted to this new paradigm by adjusting their recruitment processes in favour of an objective assessment of specific skills – as this is a fair and effective way to compare ability and potential. This, in turn, means that experience has also grown in importance because it is the most valuable barometer of what you can do.

How this affects you

Your role in the modern recruitment process is quite straightforward: Identify the skills you need in your chosen career (both technical and transferable), develop them through your experience and prove what you have to offer in each individual application.

The careers service at the University of Kent analysed various surveys to identify a straightforward top 10 of transferable ‘employability’ skills required by employers – these are listed below.² However, you should never forget that every role you go for will have unique requirements, which you should target (see Chapter 9).

Top 10 skills required by employers
1. Verbal communication	6. Drive
2. Teamwork...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Why you need this book
• Chapter 1: Why experience matters
• Chapter 2: Planning your route
• Chapter 3: Managing your networks and social media
• Chapter 4: University, societies and volunteering
• Chapter 5: Part-time, temporary and full-time work
• Chapter 6: Internships and placements
• Chapter 7: Heading overseas
• Chapter 8: Managing your journey and staying safe
• Chapter 9: Applications and interviews
• Notes
• References
• Index