A Lack of Relevant Work Experience Doesn’t Have to Hold You Back

By Inspiring Interns

Share on: 

Lacking relevant work experience can land you in a catch-22 situation. You need relevant work experience in order to get the right job, but you need the right job in order to get relevant work experience. This is why many graduates feel pressured to do unpaid internships because it’s seen as a stepping stone to relevant paid work. Of course, you can also do a paid internship, but the competitive nature of the graduate jobs market means that these paid internships often have relevant experience as a requirement. And even if they don’t, there will no doubt be applicants who do have such experience, who you will be competing with.

So what are you meant to do? Are you destined to do a series of unpaid internships before getting paid for your hard work? Depending on the industry (i.e. media or fashion) this may be the reality of the situation (unless you have those all-important connections and contacts who can help you gain employment).

On the other hand, there are certainly ways to gain a valuable skillset (without doing an unpaid internship) so that you can impress potential employers.

These suggestions involve putting in time and effort without compensation (perhaps even incurring a small cost). However, they do not involve working a 9 to 5 job and doing work that, according to the law, you should be paid for, but aren’t being paid for.

 

Learn a second language

There are loads of free resources for learning a second language. You can use Duolingo and then practice what you learn by meeting up with people who speak the language. You can do this in many ways. You could meet native speakers using sites like Meetup and Couchsurfing, look up language exchange events on Facebook, or try out a language exchange app.

If you decide to take a gap year after graduating from uni, this is another chance to learn a second language. Choose a country with a culture and language that really fascinates you and take some classes for a while. Befriending locals and practicing what you’ve learnt is the best way to sharpen your language skills.

Knowing a second language when applying for jobs can be highly advantageous, especially since some jobs list fluency in a specific language as a desirable skill.

 

Learn skills online

You can learn so many useful skills online, often for free. For example, you can set up your own blog using WordPress and then learn the basics of designing a website, creating content and sharing content. So many people do this and it involves accumulating a bunch of impressive, transferable skills. Building a successful blog or website can teach you WordPress skills, SEO, HTML, CSS, content writing, copywriting, research, editing, communication, social media marketing, affiliate marketing and email marketing.

If you can generate a certain amount of traffic from your website, then this will catch the eye of many employers. In addition, attracting lots of visitors to your site gives you the opportunity to monetize your website, which can present you with all sorts of business opportunities.

Programming - one of the most useful and lucrative skills you can have - can be learnt completely online as well. Many programmers are self-taught. It may take some time to become adept at coding, but within a year you could start getting high-quality gigs.

 

Be proactive at uni

There are all sorts of societies you can join at uni, which gives you the chance to meet like-minded people, enjoy what you are truly passionate about, and perhaps gain some valuable skills along the way. For example, if you’re interested in becoming a journalist, then contributing to the student newspaper can be a great introduction to the profession.

Follow your passion. Learn a skill that you genuinely want to learn. Complete a project or achieve a goal that motivates you or manifests your untapped creative potential. A lack of work experience doesn’t have to hold you back in your career path. You can prove yourself to be a valuable asset to a company in so many other ways.

 

Sam Woolfe writes for Inspiring Interns, which specialises in sourcing candidates for internships and graduate jobs.

Your Social Outsource Team

We won't just do social media strategies. Social Hire will work collaboratively with your team to ensure your business gets genuine value from us and that your team gets the most out of the service. Our experienced social media managers are motivated to make a enhancements to your social media marketing and reaching targets in a way that realistically makes a difference to your business goals.

What the Social Hire gang loves is making a difference for our clients, and we don't want to waste your, or our resources on campaigns that aren't right for your organisation, if it doesn't get your organisation the difference you need - we prefer a better approach. When your business utilises social media management, Social Hire get your brand the exposure it needs and offer your business the lift it needs to improve.

Our digital marketing managers are the wizards that can give you the insight you need to grow your business. Have you had enough of making difficult personnel choices that don't work well for your online marketing?

We create and implement original social media marketing plans that help our customers accomplish their organisational objectives and build up their online footprint.

We're a company that helps our customers further their social media presence by providing social media marketing on a monthly basis.

You might like these blog posts 8 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Businesses, Is Your Social Media Etiquette Up To Par?, Social Bookmarking: The Best Sites and How to Use them, and The Costs of Marketing on Social Media.

  Back to Candidate blogs