Getting into Employment – speaking from experience First of all, if you do not have sufficient funds; not obsessed about your studies; not an activist who can create any societies, including those of ‘pancakes admirers’; or not simply like majority of people over here that are party sick – you might start thinking about getting a part-time job as a student. My personal advice, before making any plans – first try to get familiar with your studies and environment to see how the things are going. Otherwise you might end up being the outstanding perfectionist with lowest performance, instead of being the best student on a course with a fluency in Chinese, as you might have dreamed. Employers do not really appreciate perfectionism – that is why do not mess up priorities and try to be realistic setting goals. Presumably, you found that you can invest some time in work, start with getting familiar with regulations. For instance, there are different types of work from temporary to permanent employment, from part-time to full-time, and from unpaid to paid. Being a student under Tier 4 visa regulations, you are only eligible to work up to 10 hour for Bachelors’ and 20 hours for Masters’ and higher over study term and up to 40 hours for all students out of term time. Under Tier 4 regulations students are only entitled to work on a Contract or Temporary Basis rather than on Permanent. Thus, before applying look for this first, since even part-time job might be on a permanent base. Besides, bear in mind that British legislation don’t distinguish between paid and unpaid work; thus unpaid internship counts towards total work hours limit. The key principle you need to follow to obtain a job here ‘Don’t give up’. All successful people were driven by their failures. I remember, a few years ago, when regulations on hiring international workforce were even slightly less strict; to get an unpaid internship I had applied to over 40 companies. As a result, I was recruited to assist a department in my language school by a person who observed all my stubbornness (in CV I call it assertiveness), helping me to prepare for interviews. May be he was simply fed up by my perfectionism, thousands of questions, or just decided that I am a nice person to have nearby? I don’t know – but I’ve got an internship, where was even a compensation for my expenses. However, getting here an experience of a few weeks – first of all concentrate on an opportunity to obtain skills that could help your professional growth, rather than anything else. Even if you get an unpaid internship, it is not a problem as long as there is a chance to learn something useful and relevant to your future job and looks nice on your CV. Here are so many regulations, and they change as frequently as weather in May in London (when you wake up at summer but wear winter jacket in the evening). Thus, the best way to be up to date, it is not to listen a confident claim in a pub from another foreigner, and not from another student ‘who lived here for many years’ – everything might already have been changed, the most reliable source it is UKBA, where they are clear about everything they want, when they changed their mind last time and what are all multiple ‘but’. Apart from described above types of contract, there is a Placement and as I just mentioned an Internship. Placement it is something you would like to obtain if you are a student doing a Bachelor’s on your penultimate year. To me placement seems as a great opportunity to get a full-time paid employment, to obtain a valuable experience and to make sure that you’ve chosen the right career path. Internship, according to legislation standards has to be remunerated accordingly value of work performed, and couldn’t be unpaid if an employer would pay for performed job to another employee. Only exception when internship could be unpaid it is when an intern obtains from a company a relevant professional training that is of equal or even higher value of compensation. However, in reality it is not always like this and it is entirely up to you whether to accept terms of offered internship. My suggestion for someone without experience to use all the opportunities, while a person with a market experience, even voluntary one has more advantages in comparison to others with only a degree. There might be some extremes, which better to avoid. For example, some small companies try to get advantage hiring staff for ‘food and transportation’ costs and asking them to perform irrelevant to a degree tasks, but useful for a company. Hence, I do not really think that someone might benefit from polishing windows and making tea, while working towards degree in Civil Engineering. UK is a great country with tons of opportunities, but to get them requires using your head, or, being more precise, grey thing inside.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:13:01 +0000
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