Students are strongly encouraged to think outside the box when choosing their summer and term time jobs, according to Chris Eccles, Director of leading student recruitment website www.e4s.co.uk.

Chris Eccles comments: “Many students still believe that they need to gain experience in the same line of career that they want to pursue after university, and that simply isn’t true. With a reduced number of jobs available to students after university, it’s essential to demonstrate key skills to employers and these can be gained from a whole variety of jobs which students often overlook or haven’t considered.”

Jeniv Shah, 23, graduated from Oxford University in 2007 and now works for a boutique investment bank. During the summer after his second year of studies, he worked for 6 weeks for Wesser, a door to door fundraising organisation.

Jeniv comments: “I wanted to work in finance after university and knew that I needed some good experience as it’s a very competitive industry, but I also wanted to have fun at the same time. A friend of mine had worked at Wesser the previous year and the experience and perks sounded great, plus the opportunity to make quite a bit of money as it was commission based and I had just been travelling and needed to pay back some debts.”

“I applied with 4 other friends as a team and we were assigned the area of Taunton in Somerset. Wesser provided us with a house and a car for the 6 week period and we went door to door to fundraise for St John Ambulance. It meant that we worked together as a team, but we also had down time together as well so the summer was a lot of fun at the same time as gaining experience and earning money.”

Jeniv advises: “Door to door fundraising requires a lot of skills that I hadn’t previously thought about, from team work and sales skills, to communicating with strangers, diplomacy and motivating others. After university, I applied for finance jobs. Whilst 70% of graduates who work in finance have done a finance-based internship, my experience working for Wesser enabled me to demonstrate on my application forms and in interviews that I had the skills required, without having done an internship.”

Chris Eccles adds: “The advice we give to students is to focus on the skills that are required in the ultimate job they want to get after university, and to find a job which will give them those skills. It’s more important today than ever to have a CV with interesting jobs and examples, and to be able to talk confidently in an interview about real life experiences and lessons you’ve learnt from previous roles.”

For further information contact Chris Eccles on 0845 838 0595 or visit www.e4s.co.uk

Popularity: 20% [?]