Speculative approach to finding work experience

Contacting a company requesting work

Not all companies (especially smaller or medium sized companies) advertise their work experience. Contacting a company speculatively shows you have a real interest in what they do and can sometimes lead to paid work experience. You can find out more information about this on our speculative application website.

Rachel: Work experience at SUMS Consultancy

Rachel in the second year of her BSc Geology, she spent the summer after her first year working on a StudentShapers partnership and this year, she is planning to travel to India in August to spend time with her extended family. She is keen to make the best use of her summer before she travels so is hoping to find a short-term work experience placement.  Rachel is unsure what she wants to do in the long term, but she is really interested in running for a Union Sabbatical role and really enjoyed learning about university processes from her StudentShapers project. She doesn’t want to be an academic but is interested in education.

This is the process she has taken

  1. Updated her CV and LinkedIn profile to include her StudentShapers experiences and the relevant projects she has done throughout her 2nd She has added these in a general way and is aware she may have to tailor this depending on what she decides to apply for.
  2. Rachel has decided she needs to live at home so is looking at jobs that she can commute to from there. She initially tried using the job websites she found on the careers service What can I do with my degree? webpages however she can’t find a lot that fits within her time frame for working.
  3. She visits the careers service to get advice. They suggest she focus on smaller companies, and to approach them speculatively to arrange the work experience herself as often companies won’t advertise the type of experience she is after. Together her and the careers consultant decide she will start by using LinkedIn.
  1. She used LinkedIn to search for and connect with people in education strategy roles where she discovers SUMS Consultancy, a non-profit in the education sector.
  2. She saw that an Imperial alumni worked at SUMS so she sent personalised connection request asking them for short meetings to learn more about the work they do.
  3. While the alumni could not offer her an experience, he introduced her to the Operations Manager via email. She met with the manager who, after a short discussion, was able to offer her a work experience that fitted into the time she had over summer.

 

Visit the AA units on Transitions to find out more about what Rachel did during her work experience.