Work experience can unlock opportunities
Inspiring Interns, who specialise in providing meaningful and mutually beneficial work experience, examine how important doing an internship is for students in the current graduate job market, and how it can impact on your future employment chances. For more see http://www.inspiringinterns.com.
It’s grim out there. Do excuse the cliché but beyond lectures, students loans and Monday nights out there is sadly a real world to deal with. And with the ‘current financial climate’, to use the in-vogue economic leitmotif, it can be very tough for graduates.
I appreciate that you don’t need yet another article lecturing on the pitfalls of being a university leaver looking for work. You only need to switch on the telly or open a paper to have demoralising predictions rammed down your throat.
However…it is perhaps worth thinking about your next steps after leaving the bosom of higher education, and whether you have the requisite skills and experience to secure meaningful employment.
It is all well and good saying you were treasurer of the Lads Night Out Association at university, but increasingly employers are looking for real world work experience, and if the best you can muster is serving pints in the halls bar once a week then perhaps it’s time to start thinking about doing an internship.
As you may well be aware, the larger companies that have a ubiquitous presence on campus do offer perfectly good internship programs. However these are heavily over-subscribed and only suit candidates desperate to break into highly competitive corporate fields.
For many people it is a struggle to write truthful 250 word snippets on why they dreamed of being an accountant from the day they started counting. The hugely time-consuming process of applying for the damn things, filling in mountains of tedious forms with repetitive ‘When did you overcome an obstacle’ type questions just isn’t worth it if you are unsure about your future as a management consultant in a large, soulless organisation.
The trend in the student and graduate job market is now towards gathering experience with smaller businesses and start-ups. Such positions offer flexibility, serious responsibility, and the prospect of a full-time position that offers the variety a strictly structured graduate program does not.
‘How does one get such wonderful experience?’ I hear you cry. Well you could do a lot worse than googling local firms in your field of choice and contacting them to see if they could offer you anything.
Alternatively there exist a number of companies who specialise in matching students and graduates with placements in growing businesses and start-ups, working with candidates to ensure that they get the perfect position for their needs.
Some charge students a fee for their services but others, such as Inspiring Interns (http://www.inspiringinterns.com), are completely free. Inspiring founder Ben Rosen promises meaningful work experience ‘free from coffee-making and photocopying’, in companies where the intern can make a genuine impact on their employer’s fortunes. Whilst many of their candidates go on to be offered a full-time position, all come away with a serious boost to their CV.
So when the spectre of post-uni life next rears its ugly head, give a thought to completing an internship. You’ll thank yourself three years down the line.
Inspiring Interns- specializing in internships and work experience in London - visit http://www.inspiringinterns.com/
