The job market scenario has become highly competitive these days. It is really hard to create an impression on the employers with your academic grades alone. Most of the companies are in search of candidates who have the extra worth of work experience. Work experience is not limited to one particular domain of job, it can be internships, work placements, or sandwich courses that helps in gaining valuable experience and acquiring job skills. Including these industry work experience on your resume can be an added bonus which helps you stand out from the crowd. These work experiences will always come in handy and help you build your career to the next level. They also helps in adding credibility to your work profile. Work experience helps you in finding out which job suits you the most.
Academic institutions in the United Kingdom promotes work culture among students by providing them with opportunities to participate in internships, work placements, or sandwich courses. Even though there are some similarities between these three opportunities, they vary from each other in various aspects. To have a deeper understanding of these types of work experience, we will provide you with a brief of each one.
Internships
An internship is a professional learning experience that offers meaningful, practical work related to a student’s career interest or field of study. It is mostly a short term work experience offered by companies especially for students to provide them with some basic level exposure in their chosen field. An internship can range from a week to a year in length, and is usually completed over summer vacation by students. Summer internships are one of the most common types of vacation work experience among college students. Internships help students in learning about the field, making connections, building own networks, and developing both hard and soft skills. Students don’t typically receive any academic credits for completing internships, although it may be recognized by professional training organizations. Depending on the position, interns may or may not get paid. It is mainly dependent on the nature of internship. Unpaid internships are common, especially when the internship is counted as academic credit towards graduation. According to the law interns are supposed to be provided with atleast a National Minimum Wage as stipend.
Benefits
- Gives entry level exposure
- Builds confidence
- Opportunity to meet and learn from the pros
- You will start building your own network
- Research experience
