Work experience

Work experience can help you develop your skills and knowledge, and get your foot in the door of your dream job. It can even help you decide what career is right for you. Employers use work experience as a key factor in deciding which graduates to employ, so it should be the number one thing to add to your CV while you are studying.

Work experience takes many forms, including industrial placements, field trips or research placements as part of your course, summer internships, part-time work, projects, and informal work experience like work-shadowing or a few days helping a business. Volunteering for a charity can also help you gain valuable skills. Find out how to find these in this section.

Gaining general experience of working is useful, because you develop skills like team working and problem solving which are useful in any type of job. But employers want career relevant experience too, so look for ways to get this. Our sector pages provide more advice, but if you aren't sure about what careers interest you yet, see our Explore Your Options section to get some ideas.

You will find advice on finding different types of work experience in the rest of this section. You can find additional news, vacancies and updates on our blog and work experience twitter stream.  

Different factors can affect what opportunities are open to you, including your year or level of study, and how much time you have available. See the 'what should I do this year' page for advice.