Work Experience

[Moogledkupo]

Well im In year 11 now and apparently its time to start looking for work experience in the summer. With the mocks coming up and all I havenet really had time to look around much and I was wondering if you would help me.
Looking for some sort of IT related work experience in the London Area, preferably central London.
Dont mind what kind of work experience it is. Working in shops or buisinesses It really doesnt matter.
Can send you a copy of my CV if you would like it. Although it is looking pretty lackluster at the moment. But yeah if anyone knows any good shops, buisiness or companies that I can send a CV off to and find work experience please do post and ill get back to you.

Thanks.

[finlay666]

It don't work like that

You do the work, or else it isn't work experience

[tiggerai]

Depends what kind of experience you want.... and what you want to do later on.

[dave87]

It don't work like that

You do the work, or else it isn't work experience

QFT!

CV's a bit lacklustre? Circular Filing Cabinet.
Not interested in what the business does? Circular Filing Cabinet.
See the trend?

You really need to find the businesses you are interested in and then tailor a CV/application letter to them directly. Oh, and make sure you get the spelling, punctuation & grammar right, as that will undoubtedly send your application to the circular filing cabinet if you can't get it right on your application.

[GheeTsar]

Of failing everything else, see if you can get a bit of nepotism going.

[Mblaster]

Well, I wouldn't worry about your CV too much, as at 15/16 you don't have much to put on it anyway. More important would be the covering letter you send along with it. When I did my work experience (slightly younger than you, in year 10) I don't think I even had a CV.

I if was you I'd try to narrow down the field you're looking for, IT is a very big area and I know I would've got more out of my work experience if it was more specific. You shouldn't have any trouble finding places to contact being in central London, write up a letter explaining you interests and what you want and tailor it to the company you are sending it to rather than using a single generic letter.

Since it's in the summer I'm guessing this isn't work experience organised through your school, that should help you in finding somewhere since it's not a fixed week with hundreds of other kids doing it at the same time.

[Moogledkupo]

By lacklustre I am referring to the qualifications that I currently have. I mean at my age I dont suppose anyone really has any qualifications worth mentioning. I have mentioned that I can touch type to within 90-100% accuracy at 80-120 Words per minute. I have a GCSE in Japanese A* and have predicted grades of A/A* for Latin, French, Religeous Studies, Maths, English, English Literature, Double Science. I mean its not exactly that amazing is it?
The sort of area which I am looking for is more Analyzing systems, maybe troubleshooting or even building computers. Id like to work in a shop or a buisiness which deals in these matters. It would be nice if I could learn something about computers at the same time. I know how to build a computer but im not sure that will help me in any IT related work. The problem is that it is so daunting to approach a Company and hand in a CV to ask for work experience.
The school is making me do at least 1 week preferable 2 weeks of work at the place which I have chosen so it needs to be something that takes my interest, but I would be happy doing admin copying up notes arranging stuff, organising things accounts anything that is available for me to do I will consider.
I hope that answers many of your questions if not make another post and I am sure I will be able to Answer it.

[Whiternoise]

First off pick what area of IT you're interested in. Do you want to get down and dirty with hardware? Call up the local repair outfits and ask for some work experience. Do you want to learn a bit about programming? Call up some web development people and see what they say (more than enough of them in the square mile). If you want retail work, it won't be work experience. It'll be work. During the summer there isn't much open in terms of retail, all the students come back from their term times (long before you in most cases) and fill up the good jobs. Summer is typically not the busiest time of year for retail either unless you're in a holiday destination so jobs will be scarce.

Next, what sort of work would you like to be doing? Have a look at the company websites and see what sort of research/projects they're into. Learn a bit and mention it on your CV. When i'm applying for work experience (as a scientist-in-training) I always look to see what papers the place has turned out in the last few months to see what kind of things interest me. If it comes to an interview you will come out on top if you've done some background research.

The best employers will give you free reign over what you want to get experience in. Say i applied to Cisco, they might ask me what are i would like to go into - networking, routing, databases, customer support(!). If you sit there and say "er.. i don't mind" it shows you haven't thought about it, if you can say "well i saw you were doing some research into efficient something somethings, so it would be great to get some experience in the something something department" or "i'm doing an A-Level in electronics next year so your hardware division would be great". And so on and so on. This is being optimistic, odds are you'll get a duff job filing papers for someone or doing the job that no one else really wants to do - but hey, there's an intern, get them to do it! As you get more and more experienced, better opportunities will become available.

Make your CV look professional, at your age you don't need to worry so much about "standing out" because realistically you haven't done anything yet. But it still needs to look respectable, if it's scruffy or has bad spelling (MS Word has a F7 for a reason) it will get ignored.

And for God's sakes put something interesting on your CV. "I like reading and music" is an instant turn off. At the very least "I have a keen interest in IT, having done X and Y".

EDIT: Didn't see your post there

By lacklustre I am referring to the qualifications that I currently have. I mean at my age I dont suppose anyone really has any qualifications worth mentioning. I have mentioned that I can touch type to within 90-100% accuracy at 80-120 Words per minute. I have a GCSE in Japanese A* and have predicted grades of A/A* for Latin, French, Religeous Studies, Maths, English, English Literature, Double Science. I mean its not exactly that amazing is it?
The sort of area which I am looking for is more Analyzing systems, maybe troubleshooting or even building computers. Id like to work in a shop or a buisiness which deals in these matters. It would be nice if I could learn something about computers at the same time. I know how to build a computer but im not sure that will help me in any IT related work. The problem is that it is so daunting to approach a Company and hand in a CV to ask for work experience.
The school is making me do at least 1 week preferable 2 weeks of work at the place which I have chosen so it needs to be something that takes my interest, but I would be happy doing admin copying up notes arranging stuff, organising things accounts anything that is available for me to do I will consider.
I hope that answers many of your questions if not make another post and I am sure I will be able to Answer it.

Well firstly, ditch the modesty. You don't get jobs by pretending that straight A's isn't any good - even if they're predicted - a lot of people applying for some jobs won't even have one A, let alone a pageful. Touch typing is fine, though i would be tempted to say you can comfortably touch type at 75wpm rather than say you're almost perfect at 80-120 (10% is every tenth character mistyped, not necessarily a good thing - and what people pick up on rather than the 90%).

There are a few levels of application you can do:

1. Email - easy and relatively anonymous, send a copy of your CV and ask relevant questions
2. Written - drop in your CV and covering letter (ask about work experience)
3. Verbal - go in all guns blazing, wear nice clothes (a suit if you really want) and ask them what's available to you - or call them up

If you're not feeling confident, i never am with these sorts of things, then just email their HR department (if it's large enough). If you apply to enough places, someone will probably reply. Say that you're willing to speak to a member of staff about prospective employment and when would be a good time to drop by.

[Moogledkupo]

Hearing your response is really helpful for building some confidence up. ^^
Ill repost when ive sorted some placement out. Thanks alot.

[garbage456]

sorry but YOU have to contact a business, they have nothing to gain by contacting you, they dont even know if you are genuine.

[finlay666]

You'll be lucky to find a place under 16 (even under 18 in some places) as they may not have workplace insurance to cover you, and your abilities will be limited.

[Moogledkupo]

When have I said that I am waiting for them to contact me? I dont understand.

[circuitmonkey]

When I was doing work experience I found it helpful to get friends of the family in the Industry to help out, remember, what's the worse they can say... "no"?
We had a family friend who worked at Intel help myself and a couple friends secure placements with various departments inside Intel. We still had to apply through the official routes but I'm sure it didn't hurt us having an employee hand in our applications and vouch for us.
I ended up working in desk side services (tech support), it was an interesting week even if the only thing I took from it was that I didn't want to do it for a profession. Sods law that during my Uni I've been doing just this to keep me in pocket money!

[Moogledkupo]

Interesting. Well ill go round to various companies and find something and will keep you all posted. Oh and when you said that thing about the typing. I meant to type 99% not amazing with the numbers normally just use the numpad.

[Az00123]

You'll be lucky to find a place under 16 (even under 18 in some places) as they may not have workplace insurance to cover you, and your abilities will be limited.

+1 on the insurance, i wanted to do my work experience in year 10 in a local computer repair shop and they couldn't let me due to not having the correct insurance for me to work there.

[digit]

My school arranged work experience for me back when I was in year 10 which was quite a few years ago, and I believe covered insurance liabilities to. Thats been the same for all my friends who did work experience. Never heard of having to arrange it yourself at secondary school level... As it happens I wanted to work in an office doing IT admin work but ending up working in a garage, suited me though