HASSLES OF JOB EXPERIENCE.

Job or work experience is any kind of experience that a person gains while working in a specific field or occupation, but the expression is widely used to mean a type of volunteer work that is commonly intended for young people, often students to get a feel for professional working environments. An equivalent term is Internship or Industrial Training.

Many employers in the more sought after professions demand that every new entrant undergo a period of unpaid "work experience" before being able to get paid work. At university level, work experience is often offered between the second and final years of an undergraduate degree course, especially in the science, engineering and computing fields. 

Courses of this nature are often called INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. During this time, the students on work placement have the opportunity to use the skills and knowledge gained in their first two or three years, and see how they are applied to real world problems. This offers them useful insights for their final year and prepares them for the job market once their course has finished.

      

                               TYPES OF WORK EXPERIENCES

       INTERNSHIPS OR INDUSTRIAL TRAININGS

An intern will often work in an actual job or a specific project lasting several months. Internships are usually undergraduate experiences and paid. The saddest part about internship for students in Nigeria is that they have no belief in it; they try to avoid going for it as well as possible. You get to hear the following excuses and complaints:

1.  “I can’t earn academic credit for the semester if I am doing an internship”.
The truth is that you will earn extra points for your internship. To receive credit for an internship, a student will have to meet the eligibility requirements set forth by school's policy in order to participate in the Industrial training or internship program. Documentation from the employer and school's registration are required in order to earn credit for an internship.

2.  “I should look for a position with a big name well-established company”

There are advantages of seeking an internship with a well-established company, but many organizations, both big and small, provide high quality internships that may provide a broad range of responsibilities.

3. “I will be doing menial tasks, running errands and filing documents for the employees”
Unless you do not know what you want, the truth is that an IT or internship work experience should be relevant to your degree. A position is approved by your department after the advisor determines that the work experience will be worthwhile. You will be challenged, applying what you’ve learned in class, learning new skills and developing a professional work ethic. In most cases, you’ll be treated as a valuable staff member, working on real projects and being given responsibilities just like a new hire. With all professional experiences, there are always administrative tasks in every job category in order to accomplish the mission and goals of an organizational structure. 

4. “I cannot even be guaranteed a full-time job if I do an internship”
Companies most often use internships to recruit the best and the brightest students for full-time positions; therefore, internships are more likely to open doors to entry-level positions. Sometimes interns are hired by employers directly, but this action would depend on the intern having the right skills, attitude and experience. In addition, the economy, financial standing of a company and potential new contracts should also be factored into an offer of full-time employment. In reality, an internship is a 15 week interview with you in the spotlight; what a perfect setting for a company to evaluate the capabilities, performance, attitude, and initiative of prospective employees. Students may not get a full-time position offer from the company they interned for, but the experience they gained during their term will make them more marketable to other companies when going through the recruiting process.

                                Create Your Own Internship

- Identify a goal: Look for an opportunity that will enhance your academic experience and is interesting to you.

- Identify a place.

- Research online to locate interesting organizations or companies in your field.

- Network with contacts (e.g. family, friends, faculty, former employers) to discover additional possible internship sites.

- Review the “what can I do with a degree in...” page for your major or academic program. These lists give you direct access to the names of organizations that have a track record of seeking students with skills in your academic area. You can use this knowledge to tailor a list of organizations to research and potentially contact.

However, here are a few tips that can help you get a job when you do not have the required criteria of having a good enough work experience that can make you very qualified for the job:

1. Figure out why you’d be great at the job. When you decided to apply, you had some reason to believe you could do the job being advertised, right? So spend some time thinking about why. This doesn’t have to be about formal experience; it can be about personal traits you bring to the job, or other less formal qualifications. For instance, it's perfectly appropriate to mention your love of creating order out of chaos when applying go an admin job, your encyclopedic knowledge of fashion when applying to work in merchandising and so forth.

2. Don't worry about being a perfect match. You don’t need to have every single qualification listed in the job advertisement; people get hired all the time without being a line-for-line match with the job posting. You should have most of the qualifications, of course; don’t apply for jobs that ask for 10 years of experience if you’ve only been working for one. But if the ad asks for three to five years of experience and you have two years, and you can write a really good cover letter and point to solid achievements in those two years, then go ahead and apply.

3. Pay a ton of attention to soft skills. You don’t have the work experience that will let you sail through a hiring process, and that’s not something you can change overnight. But what’s much more within your control are the soft skills that you display to an employer – like friendliness, professionalism, responsiveness and follow-through. Being stellar in these areas can serve as a counterweight to your lack of experience.

4. Think about what non-obvious experience you can highlight. You might not have years of work experience, but what else in your background can demonstrate that you have the skills the employer wants? For instance, maybe your fundraising work with your university's alumni association demonstrates that you can quickly create rapport with people of all backgrounds and aren’t afraid to ask for money. Or maybe the tech blog you’ve run as a hobby demonstrates compelling writing and an ability to pick up new technology quickly. Experience doesn’t have to just come from traditional professional jobs; you probably have other things in your life that demonstrate useful skills.  

5. In your interview, strike the right balance between confidence and humility. This is a tricky one. On one hand, if you’re not confident that you can do the work, your interviewer won’t be either. But on the other hand, you don’t want to come across as inappropriately cocky or naive about your own experience level and what it will take to do the job well. You need to find a balance somewhere in the middle – confident but with a realistic understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses.

6. Look for ways to get the experience you lack. Yes, it would be nice to step into a full-time job, but if no one’s offering you one, look for ways to get more experience for your CV. Part-time internships, volunteering or even just doing projects on your own can mitigate some of that experience deficit and make you a stronger candidate.

7. Be realistic. While all of the tips above help strengthen your candidacy when you don’t have a lot of experience, it’s also important to be realistic about what types of jobs you'll be considered qualified for. In a tight job market like Lagos, where employers are flooded with highly qualified applicants, there’s less incentive for them to consider people who are less qualified. You’ll have the most success if you carefully target jobs you truly can prove you can succeed at – not just jobs where you think “I could do that,” but jobs where you can point to specific evidence that you’d excel.