When the placement ends…
DON’T bug your supervisor to give you a job.
DO email your supervisor to say how much you enjoyed the placement, and ask him/her to bear you in mind if they hear of anybody needing an assistant, either on a permanent or temporary basis.
DO ask for a reference, on headed note paper. Even if no-one ever asks to see it, it’ll give you a boost.
DO update your CV immediately. Play down the boring stuff and big up the interesting stuff, especially where you were given extra responsibility or worked closely with somebody senior.
DO talk as much as you can about your work experience in interviews for related jobs. If you’re asked to ‘Recall a time when…’ it’s far stronger to use an example from a work placement than from something you did at university.
If weeks turn into months…
DON’T be afraid to initiate a conversation with your supervisor about money. If you’ve been there a while and you’re doing more important stuff than you were at the start, it’s a fair question. They shouldn’t be surprised that you’re asking – in fact, they should respect you more.
DON’T forget to think through what you’ll do if they say they don’t have the budget to pay you. How long are you prepared to stay in this ‘job’, without pay? If they say they can’t pay you, will you start looking for other opportunities, either paid or unpaid? You have two options:
The high risk strategy is be to tell your employer you simply can’t afford to keep working for free – so although you’ve loved working there, you’ll have to leave if they can’t afford to offer you any kind of salary. Sometimes, the thought of losing you – and re-training someone else from scratch – is enough to make your manager miraculously free up some cash from somewhere. Other times, they simply won’t have a budget. In which case you’ll either have to stick to your word and leave – or backtrack and stay, at least until you line up something else.
The low-risk strategy is to ask for some money and see whether they offer, without you mentioning that you’ll have to leave if they can’t pay you. If they say no, ask what your likely prospects are at the company for paid work in the near future. Then, you’ll have to decide whether the chance of this ever ‘turning into’ a paid job are high enough to warrant sticking around working unpaid – or whether it’s time to start looking for other opportunities elsewhere.
Also on Graduate Fog…
Will a postgraduate qualification boost your chances? Read How to Decide about Further Study
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It’s not just young people who are expected to work for free. I’m 30 years old and I graduated this summer from an arts degree (with a 1st too) after a change from a 10year-long career. During my years at university I made sure that I worked in the industry as much as studying would allow. After graduating I felt so prepared and mature that I was confident I was going to get employed very soon. After 6 months of painful job-hunting I’ve been turned down after getting interviews for having too much experience for an entry position but not enough for anything else. Even with rent and bills to pay, with no parents to help and a huge student debt, I still resorted to an unpaid internship to try and close that ‘experience gap’. The problem seems to be growing more and more in the arts with the cuts unabling employers to hire anyone, nevermind young or older graduates.