When preparing for a job interview, students often worry about not having enough work experience. However, the term 'work experience' is sometimes misunderstood. Most students understand work as a paid position in a particular organisation. From employers' perspective, this definition is much broader.
Work experience means skills, competences, knowledge acquired through both paid and voluntary work, development of personal projects.
So, in order to successfully compete in the job market, accumulate career-relevant work experience from the beginning of your studies.
Forms of work experience
Take up a new, untried activity (this will broaden your horizons and help you discover what you're interested in). First-hand experience will give you valuable new insights into career paths, jobs, employers, and other aspects of your career. The experience can give you new knowledge and ideas not only about a particular career but also about yourself - your interests, values, skills, and compatibility with a particular career and environment.
Keep track of where you have participated in the last 5 years. So keep all the certificates whenever you receive them and reflect on gained experience. If you want to properly present the acquired knowledge and experience to the employer in the future, describe the gained experience and collect supporting documents.
An observation of a specialist's working day (or a certain task) at his / her workplace. Job shadowing provides important practical information about a specific job and its requirements. It is also valuable for building a contact network and assessing whether such a job would be interesting for you.
Make sure to prepare for job shadowing:
- find a specialist and arrange a possibility to observe their work;
- collect information about the job, the organisation;
- think about the questions that you would like to ask.
If you have any questions about how to find an organisation or the job you want, you can find guidance here.
A short-term work experience related to career goals, interests and/or field of study. All interns should be supervised by an internship supervisor. Remember that internship can be done both in Lithuania or abroad.
Know your rights! Internship that are not related to your studies can be done at any time, but only once per year and no longer than 2 months per organisation. This type of internship can only be done 3 times in total.
A non-paid, voluntary activity for the benefit of society that can be performed in various organisations. It can be either a short-term or long-term activity.
Volunteering in various organisations provides an opportunity to:
- Gain experience and be visible to employers.
- Try different activities and decide whether they interest you.
- Develop skills like collaboration, problem-solving, leadership, teamwork, etc.
- Meet different people and form your own contact network.
- Fulfill interests not covered by your degree program.
A large database of non-governmental organisations can be found in the NGO Atlas. There you can select organisations of your interest by applying search filters.
Depending on the organisation you choose, you may need to fill in an application form, send your CV or take part in an interview.
Visit organisations' websites as well as their social media accounts. Even if you do not find information on how to join them, feel free to contact them and tell them what interests you in their activities, and what you would like or could contribute to.
Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out what benefits you can bring to an organisation, especially if there is not enough information about its activities. In this case, when you contact them you can indicate that it would be interesting for you to meet and learn more about the organisation, and to find out how you could contribute.
If you are considering taking a break before going to higher education institution or starting postgraduate studies, you can take advantage of volunteer programs for young people. There are also quite a few short-term projects that allow students to volunteer abroad without making a break in their studies (e.g., during summer holidays). You can find a list of organisations offering such opportunities on the Youth information and consultation platform "Žinau viską" (in Lithuanian).
- Science and business cooperation projects.
- Events in your field, organised by your higher education institution.
- Learning foreign languages.
- Online courses of universities worldwide. Many worldwide known universities offer their courses remotely on different platforms, for example, Coursera or Udemy. Some of the courses on these platforms are free of charge.
- Creating your own business. If you are interested in building your own business, there are a number of training and events on this topic offered by "Versli Lietuva".
- Finding a mentor. Mentoring is one of the most effective ways to share experiences and develop talent. You can find a mentor through Idialogue, an open, free mentoring platform.
- International projects. AIESEC is one of the organisations that take care of the education of young people by participating in international projects. Its website also provides information on opportunities to gain international experience.
- Tailored search. When you find organisations that work in your area of interest, start tracking their pages on social networks and other channels through which they post information about their events.
- Joining LinkedIn. You can search for people and professionals relevant to your career, follow organisations of interest and get advice.
- Developing personal projects. Do not underestimate the work you do in your spare time. If you have helped a friend create a website, organised a trip or a birthday party for your friends – you can also present such activities as your experience.
Reflect on gained experienceį
For self-reflection on your experience, you can ask yourself these questions:
- What valuable knowledge did you gain about yourself and the activities you tried?
- What difficult situations did you overcome?
- What was the biggest challenge you faced?
- What problems did you solve?
- What did you achieve?
- What did you (dis)like about this activity?
- Would you like your career to be related to this activity?
- Did you learn anything new about yourself?
- Did you learn anything new?
- What competencies have you developed?
- What strengths and areas for self-improvement did you reveal?
Collect evidence of various experiences in your career portfolio. Highlight the experience that was important to your career, and when the time comes you can show it to a prospective employer or customer. For example, keep the marketing plan you created when you were volunteering for a non-governmental organisation or the certificate of a seminar you attended during non-formal training.