How To Gain Experience When You Don’t Have Any
As any student or recent graduate knows, companies of today are all after one thing — experience.
No longer is “passion” or your very expensive degree enough to get you in the door.
Today you need to show that not only are you passionate and informed about the area you want to work in but that you have a proven record in the form of … you guessed it — experience.
The problem is, you need experience to get experience.
So, how are we meant to get experience in the first place?
When I first started applying for internships (unpaid let me add), honestly, it blew my mind.
Here I was studying hard, reading and keeping up to date with the industry and yet I couldn’t meet that little requirement at the bottom of the job ad. Because of this, I found myself constantly being rejected from jobs that I knew I could do.
This is when I decided I needed to change my approach.
Clearly, I couldn’t communicate to potential employers that the theoretical knowledge I had learnt was enough for me to add value to their business. So I created my own ‘career bootcamp’ and started building a portfolio of experience.
This little experiment provided me with the experience I needed to land an internship and begin my career. But it also taught me independence, resilience and gave me the confidence in my ability that I needed.
Enough about me…. do you want to know how you too can gain the experience needed to land your first ‘real’ role? Then keep on reading!
1. Get involved in a student society
Still in university? Or even better just starting out?
Joining a student society, not as a student member, but in a committee position would have to be one of the most valuable ways I’ve built up experience. Not only will you get to learn from students above you but very quickly you will often get the chance to take on a leadership position yourself.
Student societies are essentially run like mini businesses.
There is the president (CEO), a board of advisors, AGM’s to hold, targets to meet, customers (students) to attract, sponsors to work and negotiate with and a team culture to build.
Taking on a committee position gives you responsibility and the chance to try out different ideas and gain performance metrics…
(lines like: increased brand awareness by 32% among commerce students — which look golden on your resume).
This will allow you to learn practical skills (such as content creation if you work in a marketing role) but also give you the chance to further build-essential soft skills — resilience, teamwork, communication (you get the gist — go apply now!)
2. Complete a virtual internship
Ok so if you haven’t yet heard of a virtual internship then definitely go do a quick google search now.
Created by leading companies (think the likes of Deloitte, McGrathNicol and KPMG) you can sign up and complete similar work to what you would actually do if interning for the company.
I use InsideSherpa and find the different tasks posed by companies are great to understand what you will actually do in a role.
3. Meetups
Ok, so this may seem a little odd Meetups may be known as more ‘networking’ than experience building.
However, attending meetups in the area you want to work in is a great way to understand the lingo, what is happening in the industry, learn new skills and build your network.
Going alone can be scary at first but once you attend that first event you will be hooked with motivated adrenaline and no longer remember the flutters.
4. Become a freelancer
Want to know a little secret?
Nobody knows what they are doing either! So as cliche as it may sound you may as well ‘fake it till you make it’.
Studying software engineering? Create your own software.
Studying marketing — go ask the local cafe if you can assist in building an online marketing strategy — for free.
Start an online business, create a website, write a blog post.
The opportunities are endless you just need to make a start and before you know it you will have a portfolio of experiences to show potential employers.
Ruby.
