Work Experience – Is It Worth It? By LSM Student Gemma Benefer

For those looking for jobs today, it’s a harsh world. You need experience but to even get the experience you need other experience and to get that experience you need a job. Not making much sense am I? But it is an endless loop.

Gemma Benefer_LSM_Jan2014To get work experience, you often need to do it for free. It can kind of suck, especially when other people you know are getting paid for having a “real job”, but you have to focus on what it would hopefully do in the long run. My work experience has already paid off and it kinda links to what I said before. There was an opportunity to work on the breakfast show at BBC Radio Lincolnshire during my second year at Uni. By this point, I was already volunteering at Siren FM. I applied, not really thinking I’d get it, but during my interview I was told that I wouldn’t have even gotten an interview if I hadn’t had any other work experience. So it just goes to show that to even get experience you still need other experience to get there.

It’s tough to get experience though, I’ll admit. A lot of the experience I have done is through sheer luck. I worked at Hollyoaks for a week because one of the Director’s was a family friend (and I honestly can’t thank him enough!) from there, I got the bug. Continue reading