Speculative applications

A speculative application is an application made to an organisation or research group when a job, research opportunity or internship is not publicly advertised but you are interested in working for them. You are enquiring to explore if there is a potential opportunity available. 

Here are starting points to making speculative applications:

• Ensure you have visited our self-reflection pages to help you identify your skills and values before you start making approaches to introduce yourself.
• Consider what sort of roles and what type of organisations are of interest to you and where you feel you could use your skills to their advantage.
• You may need to get creative to find organisations to approach. Many large companies will not accept speculative applications and the smaller organisations that do accept these approaches can be harder to find. Visit our What can you do with your degree pages for help in finding relevant organisations connected to our subject areas and for further hints and tips on expanding your search.
• Speculative applications are frequently sent to generic email accounts, such as info@company.com Where possible, try to include a named person, for example, try to find and name the head of the department you’d like to work in, or someone in appropriate seniority. LinkedIn is a good resource to help with this if the organisation's own website does not tell you.
• Speculative applications require a good deal of patience and resilience. Not everyone will respond to your approaches; some may outright reject you, others will ignore you. Set up an accurate record system to help track your progress.

Speculative applications are often sent by email. Before you start to compose these, you should pause to ensure that you’re clear about what you can offer them, what you would like from them, and when you’re available. You’re attempting to grab the readers interest and commence a negotiation where you intend to persuade them that they want to work with you.

Be mindful that you are not a priority to the intended recipient so ensure that you are clear, concise, respectful and professional in your approach. Brevity is often key to success. Here are some tips to consider structuring your email:

Briefly introduce yourself and why you are contacting them and/or the organisation:

• Explain what has attracted you to the organisation and how you found them.
• Describe what you would like from them in terms of a project, placement, internship, or graduate role and explain how you believe you could add value to them.
• Be specific about any timeframes you’re working, for example with placement dates as part of your degree programme, or, indicate your availability if you’re more flexible.
• If you’re an international student explain your work potential from your visa. See out International Student Support pages on Working in the UK.
• Provide your contact details and welcome a conversation to discuss potential suitability.
• Thank them for their time.

Your introduction should be concise (typically 100-150 words) and mindful of the reader’s time. You could accompany your initial email with an attached copy of your CV or provide more details with a Cover Letter that expands on your motivations and suitability. 

Ensure your email has a suitable subject line that explains the intended purpose. For example “University Placement Enquiry – Imperial Computing Student Spring/Summer 2026”

Keep a record of your speculative applications and provide a friendly follow up if you’ve not heard within 7-10 days. If you’ve not heard following a polite chaser email it’s likely that this avenue has gone cold and you should move on.

While you may not know exactly what skills you’ll need for a role when submitting speculative applications, it is still possible to target your CV to the types of role that you would like to do. You can include a brief personal profile at the top of your CV and use this statement to tell the reader briefly who you are and what sort of role you are interested in. e.g. “Third year Bioengineering student at Imperial interested in gaining work experience in the field of prosthetic limb design with a career goal to improve the lives of patients.”

Below are some ideas on how to identify what skills to highlight within your CV:

• Consider the industry/research area you are applying for? Are there specific skills that will be good to highlight?
• Look at similar advertisements for opportunities in similar organisations. What sort of skills do they ask for? Our reading job advertisements page can help with this.
• Study the organisation's website and see if you can find any clues from that. Do they have an ‘our people’ or a ‘work for us’ page that might give you further details about skills, values and behaviours?
• Use LinkedIn to explore other employees at the organisation or in similar industries. What skills to they have that you can also highlight?

Finally, your CV should be saved and attached as a PDF with your full name as the title e.g. “Jennifer Humphrey – CV”, as this helps to lock your document formatting and enable the reader to find, store and access it more easily.