For many of us, summer is the time we spend away from education and responsibilities; it’s our reward for having worked so hard throughout the year. And even though the thought of spending these three valuable months preparing for your future career might not seem like the ideal situation right now, graduating will bring a whole new perspective on this issue.

Once this happens, you’re forced to go into the “real world”, where everyone just expects you to know things. On top of this, once you’re in full time employment the time you have for trying different things suddenly shrinks dramatically. This is the reason why now is the best time for you to try out various jobs and to put yourself in new situations, even if you’re just doing it to experiment.

Don’t worry about not liking it: it’s so much better to find this out while you can still make a change. The worst case scenario would be for you to sign a long term contract in a job that you discover you hate. This is why job placements are useful: they give you the opportunity to experience your chosen industry even before you need to make a final choice.

You might come to discover that the career you wanted so bad does not actually suit you at all. If this is the case, try not to be discouraged: there are still plenty of ways you can make use of your placement. You can use it as an opportunity to network or find out more about how a certain company is ran. It’s up to you to make your placement suit your needs, even if you’re planning to take a different route afterwards.

On the other hand, you could also be one of the lucky people who get a perfect internship. This will give you great experience for your future career, as well as peace of mind for knowing not only what you want to do, but how you should do it as well.

No matter what the outcome is, it is better to have experienced the industry first hand while still in studies. This way, the misconceptions about the work place will be broken and you will leave university knowing what the “real world” is like.

We’re only students once, so we should make the best use out of it. If you feel stuck, the Careers and Employability Service at Coventry University will be more than happy to help you with tailoring your CV and applying for placements.

Stef
BA Media Production Student
Coventry University