What with the world of work becoming more and more competitive, students are searching high and low for ways to gain a spotlight amongst their hopeful peers. According to this article from NowLearning, extra-curricular activities are your best bet for getting into your desired field of work…maybe even more so than your actual degree. In fact, many students have given up the dream of being a first class graduate, in exchange for that emerging and popular entity… The Well Rounded Individual.
So, what to do? Which direction to go in? What does it all mean to an employer? The answer is everything, and with fervour. Involvement in a sports team, academic group or in a drama society implies teamwork skills and adaptability…not to mention a personality. Nobody wants the socially inept introvert who spent the entirety of their school nights tucked up into their bedroom alone as their new intern. But get involved with the committee and suddenly, you have a whole extra set of skills to flash in an interview situation. Compromise, negotiation and an understanding of managing difficult situations. All of the aforementioned can be music to a potential employer’s ears.
Better yet, seek time-filling activities outside of university walls, in the form of a relevant part-time job or work experience. A part-time job says that you have excellent organisational skills, thanks to your ability to juggle uni work and a job without either one suffering the consequences and that is a key skill to have in the work place.
If you can stand it, unpaid work experience, albeit sometimes soul destroying, says a lot about you as an employee. It shows true passion for a field if you can do the work off of your own back for an extended period of time, with not a huge amount to gain on your part. It could be anything- writing for a newspaper, volunteering in a kennel, or even working in a school. It takes a lot for people to do something for nothing, and those that are willing rarely go unnoticed.
So there you have it. If you’re looking for quick tips to get into your dream career, there aren’t many that work quite as well as good old-fashioned effort. So make time for your future whilst at school and university. Join a team, get a job, and work as hard as you can at all of it.