Work and professional experiences

Work experience can come in many forms and it does not need to be a formal internship or industry placement. Keep scrolling to explore a range of opportunities and ideas for building your experience.

Employers like to see work experience in graduate applicants because it demonstrates skills that are more difficult to develop through academic study alone. Depending on the role, you may gain experience in areas such as customer service and, team work, and work readiness skills such as time management and professionalism.

Whatever the type of opportunity it can give you the following things:

• Transferable skills and knowledge;
• An opportunity to discover if a job is for you;
• Contacts in your chosen industry;
• Experience that you can talk about on job applications and in interviews;
• Payment (Imperial College Careers Service only advertises paid positions, except in the case of charities and statutory bodies which are exempt from the National Minimum Wage Act).

Whatever type of work experience you undertake, it will give you an opportunity to develop different skills, build your confidence and meet a wide range of people. To make the most of this try:

• Creating a skills audit. Reflect on what you’re learning as you are doing the experience while it’s fresh in your mind. See our webpage on knowing your skills to help with this. 
• Growing your professional network. Add the people you work with or meet as connections on your LinkedIn profile. This way you’ll be able to get in touch with them again in the future and maintain those relationships. For more support visit our LinkedIn webpage. 

Many students think writing  a CV is the first step to getting work experience, but that’s not necessarily the case. A strong CV needs to be tailored to the role you’re applying to so it’s often easier to write one once you have a specific opportunity in mind. Some opportunities don’t need you to submit a CV at all.

• What do you want to learn?
• Do you want to build skills?
• Learn more about an industry?
• Build your CV for research roles?

This can help you better define what experience you are targeting. You also need to consider the practicalities of each experience. What year of study are you in? Do you meet the criteria for the experiences on offer? What time of the year is it? When will you have time within your studies to do the experience? The Careers service webpages on career planning, timelines and career journeys can help you to understand this.

Once you know what you want you want to gain from the experience you can start researching opportunities. This will usually involve identifying the right websites that advertise relevant roles. Visit our Exploring options section for starting points. You can also read our personas stories to discover how these fictional students they found their experiences.

Once you have found an opportunity you’d like to apply for, you can begin to create your application documents. Some organisations will want traditional documents like CVs, cover letters or an application form. Others will have bespoke processes for you to complete such as online tests or initial interviews. Application processes vary so it’s important  you read all of the instructions very carefully. The Careers webpages on applications and interviews can help you navigate the range of recruitment processes.

Getting any sort of work experience is usually very competitive so you will probably want to apply for more than one role. There is no magic number you need to apply to get an offer; rather than focussing on the number of applications you submit, prioritise quality, tailored applications to demonstrate your suitability for each opportunity.

Once you do get offered a role, you will need to decide if you’d like to take it. Our Evaluating job offers guidance can help you make an informed decision. 

Rejection is a normal part of the application process, even for strong candidates. If you find you it difficult or aren’t getting the result you hoped for, you may want to talk to someone at the careers service to get further support. You can book an appointment via jobslive.