The Benefits of Work Experience

So you may be looking into taking part in work experience over the Summer or to go alongside your degree now. Work experience comes with many benefits, both socially and professionally. I wanted to talk you through some of them in case you hadn’t considered work experience yet!

The obvious… experience

I know it’s obvious that this is clearly a perk to taking part in work experience but it’s true! Nothing can prepare you for the industry that you’re training to work in, except for the experience you can gain during. It gives you an insight into the world that you want to go into, often giving you an idea of what an average day could look like. Whether it’s a 9-5 office job, or a hands-on practical role – it’ll give you the perfect representation of what you’re getting yourself in for.

The social aspect

You’ll make friends in the industry! It’s as simple as that. You’ll gain friends and contacts within companies that you aspire to work for once you graduate – what more could you want? These contacts will make it so much easier once you graduate to potentially enquire about grad jobs and grad schemes. Not to mention the social aspect of it where these contacts could become genuine friends for life. There are so many graduates I’ve spoken to who took part in work experience throughout their undergraduate degree that are still really close to their colleagues.

References and CV

Another obvious one is that you can put this work experience on your CV. It’ll be a way of impressing future employers, especially if it’s with a firm related to the industry you’re going into. You can ask for a reference from the company as well as a professional point of view!

As a reassurance

If you’re unsure of the specific career path you want to go down, you can always use work experience as a way of trial and error. If your industry is broad like Biology or Geography, you can try different careers through work experience. I would recommend gaining work experience in your first year as once you’ve discovered what you like and don’t like, you can specify in your module choices in third year.

If you are interested in work experience I would thoroughly recommend it!