What I’m taking from my graduate internship to help me achieve my 2025 career goals

Hi everyone! I'm Rebekah. I studied my BA in English Literature at UEA, and I also hold an MA in Shakespeare Studies from King’s College London. I adore literature, films, and all things creative! Currently I'm an intern in the Student Opportunities Team, a part of CareerCentral at UEA.?

Having graduated this year, I know how difficult job hunting can be - the number of opportunities available can feel overwhelming, and it can seem difficult to get your foot in the door. This is why I wanted to write about my time as a graduate intern at UEA: how helpful an opportunity this has been, what I’ve learned, and the ways I’ve grown personally and professionally over just three months.??

My internship?

The key skill I wanted to focus on when I began as an intern was administration, an important requirement in many vacancy advertisements and one I felt I wanted more experience in. By working with multiple databases within CareerCentral, I now feel much more confident in operating, maintaining, and updating online systems. A lot of this work has involved strict attention to detail, accuracy and being able to plan and manage a varied workload of tasks to meet objectives. CareerCentral advertises a wide variety of graduate schemes, jobs and summer internship opportunities on its platform for current students and recent graduates to access. I’ve been involved in doing detailed online research to find vacancies that fit our requirements and would be suitable, high-quality opportunities that students and graduates might be interested in. It’s been fun to find out more about the different routes graduates could take, many of which prior to this internship I knew very little about!??

During my internship, I’ve been able to improve my written communication skills. Email communication with internal and external contacts has been central to my job, including preparing the bulletins our students and graduates can sign up for to be kept updated on the latest vacancies.??

I’ve also learned how to coordinate and manage projects with multiple priorities. Each week I have prepared and given presentations on the viewing figures for graduate scheme opportunities on the CareerCentral jobs board. This has helped me develop my data presentation and analysis skills, learning new ways to present information and make use of data to work out priorities for the next week. It has also been a great way to boost my self-confidence.?

Why I’d recommend an internship to other graduates?

I’ve learned so much from my graduate internship and would absolutely recommend them to other graduates who are looking to gain work experience and develop their skills. If you studied at UEA, check out the Internship Programme through CareerCentral as it offers roles that are exclusively available to recent UEA graduates. I’ve not only met fantastic people that are happy to help me develop my skills, but I’ve also been able to make the internship my own – such as taking opportunities to work with the marketing team and gain copywriting experience for social media channels like LinkedIn. The internship has been a great way to become more proactive, try out lots of things, ask questions and develop my skills in key areas that will help me achieve my professional goals. Not to mention it’s also been a joy to be working on campus again and living in Norwich, a city that I personally feel is a wonderful place to begin your career.??

My advice for making 2025 your year??

My best advice for graduates for 2025 would be to try lots of different opportunities to get to know yourself and what you’re interested in pursuing as a career - and when you feel like you might need some extra guidance, please don’t be afraid to reach out for help! Don’t forget CareerCentral is here to support UEA graduates for up to three years after graduation, so you can get advice from professional careers advisers, access a whole host of online resources, and find hundreds of graduate jobs, graduate schemes, internships, volunteering roles, and opportunities overseas through the online jobs board.??

I’ve learned a lot about myself over the internship and that was achieved by taking initiative, networking, and trying things outside of my comfort zone. I’d like to carry forward that motivation into the new year and explore every opportunity I can to expand my skills. Ideally, I would like to continue in an administrative role, and I’d be especially interested in pursuing this in the charity sector or an organisation working within the Arts.?

Please feel free to share your own early career experiences or any thoughts!?

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Careers support from UEA CareerCentral can be accessed while studying at UEA and for up to three years after graduation. If, as a recent UEA graduate, you are unable to access the links in this article (signing in to MyCareerCentral as a graduate should direct you to the GradCentral platform), please get in touch by email to [email protected]?

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