An overview of work experience
Organising work experience
Assessing work experience
Useful links

Work experience overview

In this context work experience is a fluid term used to refer to any experience you have had, or are planning to get, that relates to work. As well as being about specific experience in a particular employment sector it is about transferable skills you can include in your CV and detail in any job applications. You may already have a lot of work experience or you may feel that it is an area you need to work on. Either way, appreciating the value of work experience to your future career is vital: having a look at how often it is mentioned in job adverts in the graduate jobs section can illustrate this.

In particular work experience can:

• Give you an idea of what it is like to work in a particular environment or in a particular sector and whether your impressions of work in that environment, sector or job are accurate
• Demonstrate commitment (particularly in competitive areas)
• Provide you with good and up-to-date examples for your CV
• Develop transferable skills like communication, team-working and showing initiative
• Help to build up your contacts (see creative job hunting)

An article from the Guardian about the value of relevant work experience: www.guardian.co.uk/graduate/story/0,,2160123,00.html

Organising work experience

A key feature of work experience is that it is flexible: you can organise it around your commitments. It does not have to be through paid work or work placements, although it can be. Approaches could include one or more of the following:

• A part-time job during term time and/or vacations (see Jobshop for some examples)
• Full time work during vacations, or an internship
• Regular voluntary work during term-time, vacations or both (see the University's volunteering pages for some ideas)
• A period of sustained volunteering - perhaps on an overseas project if you want to travel. (See gap year information)

Many of the suggestions in the creative job hunting section also apply to gaining work experience (especially if you are looking to gain experience in a competitive sector).

There are some organisations that help to coordinate work experience. These placements are most likely to be in a commercial setting. See the useful links below for more details.

Assessing your experience

Of central importance, irrespective to how you approach work experience or how much you manage to do, is that you have evidence you have thought about your experience and considered how you and your employer benefited from it and the skills you have developed. Whether you are reading this before organising something, or you are looking back trying to evaluate how the experience you have has contributed to your career aspirations or developed your skills, there are certain things you may want to consider. These could include:

How you organised the experience:

• What does this say about you? Have you demonstrated perseverance, initiative, enthusiasm, networking abilities, organisational skills? How?

Some details about the experience:

• What was your commitment?
• What did the work involve?
• Who were you working with (customers, service users, professionals…)?

Examples of your contribution and how your employer gained from having you there:

• What did you do?
• What are some specific examples of your contribution? It doesn't have to be something grand. It could be your enthusiasm to get something done, an idea you had to improve something that you then implemented, a contribution to an organised event, an example of a situation you dealt with…

Examples of anything that didn’t go as you would have liked:

• Did something actually go wrong, or is it that you could see a way something could have been improved on?
• What happened? What was your role in responding to the situation? What have you learned from it? What would you do differently next time?
• Well-explained examples of where something did not go as you would have wanted can be just as powerful as an example where everything happened as you wanted it to.
  

What you have gained from the experience:

• Depending on the experience you are evaluating this could cover the opportunity to develop general skills like IT or communication, or the opportunity to use some more specific (course related) skills.
• Has it helped to clarify you career ideas (either way)? What did and didn't you like about working in that environment or sector?

What next?

• If you are in a position to get more work experience, what do you want to do next? How can you build on what you have already achieved? Have you made any contacts who could help you find another placement?
• If you are now looking for full time work ensure you articulate the benefits of your experience in your application forms or CV.

Other approaches to assessing work experience are included in the work-experience and Doctorjob websites listed below.

Useful links

www.fledglings.net advertises work placements, summer internships and work experience

www.step.org.uk - a scheme for second and penultimate year undergraduates. Applications are accepted year round for work placements with small and medium sized organisations. Applications are competitive and places are not guaranteed.

www.work-experience.org - from The National Council for Work Experience / Prospects who promote the benefits of quality work experience.

http://targetjobs.co.uk advice about placements and internships from Target, includes 'selling your work experience to employers' .

www.realworldmagazine.com/work-experience work experience section from Real World