When you really don't know what to do, getting hands-on practical experience can be the thing that nudges you forward and helps you make your mind up.

Work experience, internships and volunteering all help you do this while boosting your chances of being hired in the future

Work experience

Work experience of any kind will put you in new situations with new people of different ages, genders, and backgrounds, this will help you grow and challenge your thinking and behaviours, improve your relationship building and communication skills.

More and more organisations are offering virtual work experience. You can develop your business working skills remotely while figuring out what it is that you want to do.

Internships

Internships programmes and opportunities for university students and graduates that give you a taster of a particular industry. They are usually paid and can often lead to a permanent job offer in you make a great impression, but the key is that they give a chance to test out whether a particular job or career suits you, whether you like the culture and values of an organisation and could see yourself working there or whether you need to keep looking and testing. At the same time, you'll be getting relevant work experience that will help you in the future.

Volunteering

Volunteering is powerful way to help you make career choices and get a sense of what you would like to do, who you want to help and what it is you want to help them do. 'You'll find volunteering opportunities that match how much free time you have from micro volunteering to longer opportunities. These can be with local charities, national charities, or international ones where you volunteer abroad. You can be quite strategic and work in a role within a charity that is relevant to your course, or you can be more flexible and creative and just go with the fire in your belly and gain insight, develop skills and experience along the way that will help you long term. Even if a role is not exactly what you want, think laterally, you'll be having fun, building your network and making a difference while finding out more about yourself and developing as a person.

In later articles, we will be looking at how you can use these opportunities to help you develop the work experience you need to get a graduate role.

Suggested Reading

> Find out more about virtual work experience

> Internships

> What micro volunteering looks like

By Anna Gordon - Certified Business Coaching Psychologist ABP CBCP