5 Tips on How to Get Work Experience for Students

Many students want to get work experience to enhance their career prospects. Unfortunately arranging work experience isn’t always easy. The good news is that there are lots of opportunities available if you go about your search wisely.

1) Manage Expectations 

When most students think about work experience they think that working for 1-2 weeks at a company is the holy grail. Having done numerous 1-2 work experiences myself as a teenager (including at UBS and Knight Frank) I can honestly say that, whilst I enjoyed and benefited from these placements, it’s not the only form of work experience which matters. 

I’d recommend to have a look at the personal statements / cover letters of older students who have applied to universities and apprenticeships and see what they wrote. You will be surprised by how the work placement examples they use usually only takes up a few lines on their statements, and pupils spend a lot of space writing about other valuable experiences, such as the extra curricular clubs they got involved with, the relevant books they’ve read, the university and employer visits they’ve been to etc.You can check out sample personal statements for a range of subjects here: https://universitycompare.com/personal-statement-examples/

2) Be Clear on the Outcomes

A lot of students focus on the ‘what’ more than the ‘why’ i.e. they spend a lot of time talking about wanting to get work experience in a certain role or industry with little thought about what they want to gain from this experience. We should be focusing on the outcomes you want to achieve so that you can find the best opportunity to achieve this e.g. if your goal is to gain real world experience as a video game designer, you can do this through doing a 1-2 work experience placement at Sony, however you can also achieve this by doing a 1 day work shadowing experience at a video gaming company, or even having a coffee with a video game designer for 1 hour. Just because a placement is longer doesn’t mean it’s more valuable. If your manager is knowledgeable and helpful, a 1 hour chat with them can be more beneficial than a 1 week work experience at a company who makes you do admin tasks. 

Many of you will be thinking about selling your work experience when applying to universities or apprenticeships and be worried about not having a long placement. However if you can prove that you did something meaningful during your work experience and learnt something that’s all that matters. 

For example, many university and apprenticeship recruiters will expect you to use the STAR framework when answering their questions: 

• Situation: Describe the context within which you performed a job or faced a challenge at work. 
• Task: Describe your responsibility in that situation. 
• Action: Describe how you completed the task or endeavoured to meet the challenge.
• Result: Explain how the outcomes or results generated by the action taken. 

As long as you can articulate an answer using the STAR structure based on something you did with an employer that’s all that matters.

3) Connections

It’s true that most work experience opportunities tend to come from connections. However as opposed to us focusing on how unfair this is, I recommend we focus our time and energy on how we go about building useful connections ourselves. 

The Strength of Weak Ties theory states that there is a tendency for those whom one is only weakly tied, to have better access to job information. Acquaintances, as compared to close friends, are more prone to move in different circles than one's self. Put simply, this means that we are much more likely to gain opportunities from friends of friends / friends of family members (our weak ties) than our immediate friends and family (strong ties). 

Once you are clear about what you want to gain from work experience I would recommend putting together what you are looking for regarding work experience and asking your parents / friends / school teachers to try and introduce you to their own network. Many of us are nervous asking for favours from others, especially friends and family. However humans are hardwired to care for each other and help others. Imagine if your friend asked you for a favour that would help them out a lot - would you be annoyed or flattered? Most of us would be flattered they came to us to ask for help. 

4) Extracurricular Activities

There are inevitably going to be some extracurricular clubs at your school and lots of clubs outside school where you can develop your interests and talents further. E.g. let’s say you’re interested in business however you’re struggling to get work experience in a company. How can you display your passion and skill for business in other ways? Are there enterprise clubs / current affair clubs / fundraising initiatives happening at your school that you can get involved with instead? These would be great opportunities to get involved with to enhance your prospects. 

Worst case scenario if they aren’t any of these clubs at school, can you start a club / fundraising initiative yourself? It may be daunting but it will look impressive that you had the bravery and leadership to set something up, regardless of how small it is. 

Many schools are increasingly working with external career providers which gives students an opportunity to visit different employer offices, hear talks from employees and gain mentorship. I would recommend trying to get involved with these opportunities, even though they may not immediately sound appealing to you. Your teenage years are exciting because you have more time on your hands to try a range of options before making your decisions about what you want to do in the future. 

5) Use External Career Organisations

Fortunately there are more external career organisations which help students find employer opportunities. Some great sites I can recommend include:

• Slenky: https://slenky.me/
• Prospela: https://prospela.com/
• Work Finder: https://www.workfinder.com/
• Career Ear: https://www.careerear.co.uk/

Hope this is helpful. Feel free to let me know what else you’d like me to write about and I’d be happy to try and support.