The benefits of work experience have never been in doubt but the importance has grown to the point where both words Work and Experience are now spelled with capitals and its enhanced curricular status is now known by the official abbreviation WEX.  Careers Leaders in schools are under pressure to ensure all pupils have some form of interaction with employers in order to comply with #5 and #6 of the eight Gatsby benchmarks for accreditation as providers of Good Career Guidance.  

Learning but not Earning…still ok.

There is much to be gained from this and it is a regrettable side-effect of its importance that WEX is invariably unpaid.  Basic economics tells us that prices are set by the forces of supply and demand and we have a situation whereby demand for WEX so outstrips supply that the effective cost to the young person is sky high. Let’s not discuss the stories heard where you actually have to pay for it (bribery does happen) but because WEX is considered more of a privilege than a rite of passage young people do it for nothing.  They’re just grateful for the opportunity.

Best-case scenario is that employers throw open their doors, welcome you in and give you a really good look at how the business works. In return you get the benefit of picking up some contacts, learning some commercial awareness and finding things out about your own strengths and weaknesses etc, etc. The list is a long one, and at the same time the employer is also having a good look at YOU, as a potential hire at a later date. Everybody’s happy.

However, what so often happens is that you represent cheap labour and you are put to work as if you were a regular employee – except that you’re not paid. This is sometimes unavoidable. Perhaps you’ve been so impressive that not only have you made yourself useful but indispensable too (the ultimate goal) and as long as you’re getting value from it you can maximise your chances of your WEX morphing into a full-time job. Everybody’s still happy.

Neither Earning nor Learning

But what about the less-good scenario where you aren’t seeing any benefit at all?  This blog is not the place for a rant against employers for taking advantage of WEX applicants. Strictly speaking, if you’re asked to perform a task that would otherwise be done by a paid employee then you should be paid too, but where the boundaries lie between what is voluntary and compulsory is a grey area.  In theory, since there is no employment contract you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but it can be hard to refuse. Bear in mind though that requests to complete tasks over the weekend, be on hand for 40hrs per week rather than the original 20 suggested and pleas to stay on for an extra few days in order to finish a project should all trigger the thought that “I should be getting paid for this”. 

The only boundary we’re going to be exploring here is the one between Learning and Not Learning.  

WEX is only good experience (one day this will be aka GEX) if you’re learning something. That WEX bullet-point is going to have to deserve its place on your CV and if you didn’t learn anything at the time you can do it retrospectively with a tried-and-tested discipline that will stand up to scrutiny in interview*. Do it right and you will one day get successfully hired to do a paid job that you enjoy, with a proper learning curve.

Best-case scenario: Earning AND Learning.  

But until you get to that point, just one of the two might have to be enough.

*Work Savvy Commercial Awareness

For those setting out on a journey, if career advice represents the map and compass to help you navigate, your CV is the equivalent of a sensible pair of shoes.

It’s a sad fact that Life isn’t in fact a beach, and whether or not you know where you’re headed, you’d be mad to set off in flip-flops. Right? 

The picture above is one of many similar ones used by Start-Rite Shoes (est 1792), and “Well begun is half done” is one of the many captions that accompany this iconic poster. Let’s not argue who came up with it first, but if it was good enough for Aristotle who referred to it in 300 BC, and then repeated by Mary Poppins in 1964 then it’s as applicable today as it ever was. Get the foundations right and the rest is easier.  

THINK CV, and THINK SHOES.

Your CV needs to fit, with enough wiggle-room to be able to adapt to the appropriate job description.

It needs to pass the ‘sniff test’ as in, “is that real leather?”.

It’s got to say something about you. It’ll help if you feel good wearing these.

It’s got to be accurate, up to date with recruiters’ wishes and ATS requirements taken into account.

Get all this right and you’ll be on the front foot, confident and ready to go wherever the compass and map take you. 

Get in touch for your fitting today.

Don’t lose sight of what’s in it for you.

It’s a full-time occupation looking for a job, and nobody is paying you for the time and energy that you dedicate to the process. In the current climate you can be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that your limitations have been exposed, the scope of your original ambitions was in la-la land and it’s a waste of time applying for any roles advertised because nobody bothers to respond.    Whoever claimed that “there’s no such thing as bad experience” never had to try entering the job market during a pandemic.  However, annoying as it seems, they did have a point.

Self-Help.

Think of yourself for a moment, for all that hard work doesn’t have to be a thankless task. Done right, there IS tangible value to be gained from job-hunting. There are benefits to be had and you’ll be the richer for it, even though you’ll be signing your own pay-cheques.      

Improve your aim.

You may not have a clue what you want to do at first. Everything and/or Nothing is the starting-point for a huge number of us but the list of career-paths that simply don’t appeal will grow by the day and be consigned to the bin.  At the same time, feedback from networking might spark ideas for further exploration, and engaging with contacts on LinkedIn is an excellent way to stay current, fuel curiosity and experiment with your own level of interest.

Upskill

Job Descriptions are notoriously complex, and it’s a miracle if they find anybody who is genuinely compatible with those interminable lists of required skills.  You may never be given much detail of why you’re not accepted for the role, but by putting your CV through Jobscan you can get granular information of where you’re coming up short.  You might be more qualified than they thought but if you never mentioned all those relevant key words – how were they to know?  More importantly, after a while you will get a feel for those trending skills/interests that with a bit of application are well within your reach, ie you could improve your IT skills, take that (free?) coding course, complete those compliance exercises and raise your compatibility score to a level where you’ll get onto the recruiters’ radar. 

Employ Yourself.

Think of an idea – any idea. It doesn’t even have to be your own, but imagine how the likes of Jeff Bezos, Laura Tenison, Bill Gates, J K Rowling and Jo Malone got themselves started. Going through the motions of how you’d make an idea commercially viable will have you touching on a number of key skills that one day will be scattered throughout your CV, eg:  

Commercial Awareness, Self-Motivation, Budgeting, Marketing, Advertising, Fund-Raising, Creativity, Ambition, Accounting, Branding, Business Plans, Website Building, Business Development.  

Back in the real world.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves, for you may have decided that you don’t have it in you to ‘go-it-alone’. However, anybody who has ever employed you or given you work experience may have once felt the same way.  Cast your eye down that list of bullet-points on your CV, and if you failed to pick up any of those skills listed above at the time it’s not too late to do so now.  For example, to be able to demonstrate Commercial Awareness there’s a simple discipline to follow…. But that’s the subject of another blog.