Jobs and internships: don’t delay and don’t be choosy

JOBURG – Start getting work experience and building a track record of work as soon as you can.

You don’t need to wait for the right opportunity to come along or the right circumstances. And if you’re still a student or a matriculant, you don’t need to wait until your exam results are out, says Natalie Rabson of Boston City Campus & Business College.

“Employers give preference to those who have some kind of work experience so the sooner you get started, the better,” Rabson points out. “Statistics show that students that have work experience find it easier to secure good permanent jobs than those who have never worked in their lives. While waiting for your results, you can start the ball rolling to get work experience.”

There is no need to be too choosy about your first job because every job – no matter how big or small – can help you build up a track record of work experience and get you started on networking too. The most important thing is to enter the job market and start adding work experience to your CV. If you get offered a job as a temporary cashier at the supermarket around the corner from where you live, take the job. Use it to network and gain business experience.

“There are learners and graduates who don’t go for certain jobs because they think that such jobs aren’t in line with their career dreams or that such jobs don’t count as ‘real’ experience in the eyes of employers,” Rabson explains. “In this time when jobs are scarce, you need to take whatever jobs come your way and learn from them – without delay.”

Boston City Campus & Business College wants its students to get jobs as soon as they complete their studies and for that reason the college launched its Experience It! internship programme in 2011. Boston offers over 80 career qualifications through over 40 branches nationwide, including Unisa degree support tuition for commerce degrees.  Media studies are available at selected branches. The Experience It! programme helps Boston students get true workplace experience. The programme assists students in drawing up a proper CV and learning workplace basics (regarding etiquette, clothing, language, punctuality, responsibility and so on) and then places the students at a host company for a few weeks. Boston currently has internship positions in accounts, graphic design and social media. Positions are varied, and may not pay well, but experience is key.

Boston students love the Experience It programme because they get the opportunity to work in their field and to put into practice what they have learnt in the classroom. Best of all, in some cases these Experience It! internships lead to permanent employment – sometimes sooner than expected as Sanele Tshazi discovered. The third-year media practices student had barely completed his 100-hour internship as a marketing assistant when another company headhunted him and offered him a position.

“It is a wonderful surprise,” says Tshazi. “I have been writing my final exams and I still need to receive my diploma but I already have a job lined up for me. In fact, I have already started working in between my final exams.”

Tshazi feels like the luckiest person in the word to have this job when other students still have to go out there and look for jobs. However, he has no intention of taking it easy or resting on his laurels.

“I want to give the best I can give, excel at my job and move up the career ladder as fast as possible,” he says. “I am starting as a community manager in the digital marketing space but one day I may even start my own company and become a famous and rich entrepreneur, who knows?”

Rabson points out that Boston students are not automatically placed on the Experience IT! programme. They have to prepare a well-planned typed neat cv and consult with the Experience it! officer. Like Tshazi, this will give them the opportunity to go forward to make the best out of the various internship opportunities.

“Not every college offers this kind of opportunity, but we do it because for us employed graduates become the embodiment of our corporate goals and make us proud,” says Rabson.