Selling your work experience to graduate employers

All work experience is good experience, but only if you know how to sell it to graduate employers. Here's how.

So you’ve done an amazing placement with a blue-chip company, saved the gorillas of Borneo or worked in the IT department of your dad’s business – the worst thing you could do at interview is mumble ‘the coffee machine didn’t work’, ‘Borneo was a bit rainy’, or ‘dad’s business is rubbish anyway’. You need to know how to sell yourself. One of the things that can set your application apart from any other is to use your work experience to answer the competence or additional questions that a company may ask.

Keep a diary of your work experience

Keep a list all the new skills you pick up, any training you receive, difficult situations overcome, teamwork examples, personal achievements, recognised contributions and so on. As Jag Gill, marketing manager for Shell STEP, explains, ‘If you keep a diary while on your placement you will reap the benefits when applying or interviewing for a graduate job – you can be specific about your involvement and don’t have to rely on memory to remember important aspects.’

The more new skills and experiences you pick up and write down, the more examples you will have to draw from in application forms and at interview. ‘You should make the most of the transferable skills gained, rather than focusing on the actual routine tasks completed,’ says June Kay, careers adviser at Durham University.

One of the things that can set your application apart from any other is to use your work experience to answer the competence or additional questions that a company may ask.

The bottom line is that employers want to know that you are suitable for their job and company. According to the CITBConstructionSkills recruitment team, ‘Any work experience is valuable as long as you can relate it to your new job role. Explain how things you learned on your placement, such as time management, communication skills, organisation and leadership could be transferred into your new position.’

Graduate employers like to see creativity and initiative

Employers want applicants who can think on their feet and contribute in any given situation. ‘Try to give examples of times when your initiative and creative ideas were used and implemented,’ says Jag Gill, ‘as this will impress employers.’

How you initially secured your work experience placement can also be evidence of initiative. June Kay suggests that you can ‘demonstrate your initiative and interpersonal skills by securing a placement which was not advertised’, with SMEs for example.

Show your commercial awareness

‘Employers often complain that students lack business awareness’, says June Kay. However, you'll impress recruiters if you can show an understanding of how different departments or individuals in an organisation work together to provide a service or produce goods, for example, how the different functions such as production, sales, marketing and human resources all relate.

Carrie Wyatt, graduate recruitment officer for Deutsche Bank, believes that the most important thing when selling your work experience skills to employers is ‘that you can demonstrate the ability to understand the dynamics of a working environment and provide examples of work-related situations’. Again, the more specific you can be, the better.

Find out more about work experience in different graduate career sectors and professions

More advice to help you plan work experience, internships and placements