Gaining corporate/office experience

[Kelly_]

Hi!
One of my goals this year is to try and get some corporate office experience, of any kind really, just to broaden my experience as I don't have much office/commercial experience. However, I've found it hard to find a way to approach this and was wondering if anyone here had any tips on how to find such work and what type of roles I should be looking at, I've just graduated university so I've only got a bachelors degree.

Thanks!

 

[Dheepa]

Perhaps @Jessica Booker can best advise on this.

I think a bachelors degree is more than enough for any kind of corporate role especially if you're aiming for internships or graduate roles, but it probably matters more exactly what kind of roles you're interested in and whether you have the experiences to back up applying to them. Are you looking for this experience because you believe it will strengthen TC apps or for other reasons? Thought it'd be worth mentioning that plenty of people get TCs without ever having worked in a corporate environment.

 

[Naomi U]

Hi!
One of my goals this year is to try and get some corporate office experience, of any kind really, just to broaden my experience as I don't have much office/commercial experience. However, I've found it hard to find a way to approach this and was wondering if anyone here had any tips on how to find such work and what type of roles I should be looking at, I've just graduated university so I've only got a bachelors degree.

Thanks!

Hi @Kelly Bracken,

Whilst I think it is beneficial to have commercial experience, I do not feel that this is essential. I had very limited office experience ( 2/3 weeks max), however I had a wide range of other experiences via societies, my previous role as a tutor, my retail job and personal blog. The most important thing is that you show that you possess transferable skills from the experiences you do have. These transferable skills in conjunction with evidence of your interest in commercial law e.g. attending insight days and workshops should be more than sufficient.

With this in mind, any role that is predominantly concerned with research and written tasks as opposed to more numerical focused roles would be beneficial.
I hope this helps. I think @Jessica Booker might be able to offer advice from a recruiter's perspective.

Best of luck!

 

[FC]

Hi!
One of my goals this year is to try and get some corporate office experience, of any kind really, just to broaden my experience as I don't have much office/commercial experience. However, I've found it hard to find a way to approach this and was wondering if anyone here had any tips on how to find such work and what type of roles I should be looking at, I've just graduated university so I've only got a bachelors degree.

Thanks!

Hi Kelly

After I graduated, I worked in admin-level roles at two different law firms. Although I was technically overqualified for the jobs, I nevertheless found both experiences invaluable for my skill-set, and being paid on top of that wasn't too bad! After a TC interview I had last year, my feedback from grad rec praised my real-life work experiences as they really helped me answer competency and situational questions. Obviously you may not want to do exactly what I did, but I just thought I should flag the benefits of some office experience

 

[Jessica Booker]

When you say corporate, do you mean law specifically or any “commercial” environment?

 

[Kelly_]

When you say corporate, do you mean law specifically or any “commercial” environment?

Hi Jessica, I am referring to any commercial environment really!

 

[Nicole Akinyemi]

Hi Kelly

I did not apply for TCs during or immediately after university and because of that, I found recruiters were more interested in what I had done post-qualification. I was lucky to obtain several administrative, compliance and legal work which all contributed to me obtaining a TC. I learnt transferable skills, how to build relationships within a law firm and also, how a legal firm operated as a business. However, I also learnt transferable skills from working in retail and teaching English in Spain.

If you are looking for work, I would consider applying to jobs that you are qualified for and jobs that you may be over-qualified for. I tried for months to look for a paralegal role but ended up with a legal secretary position. Despite being over-qualified, I learnt a lot and worked on my skills. Also, since you have recently graduated from university, a role as an academic legal writer might be up your street.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hi Jessica, I am referring to any commercial environment really!

Focus on interim jobs. People are often looking for a six month admin person to come in and do some work, whether it be due to staff absence or a busy project/time of year.

Think about what type of jobs you want to do. Working in HR isn’t for everyone, while working in compliance won’t be for the next. Because you basically have unlimited options, you’ll need to think about what type of roles might suit your skill set and what you might enjoy enough to not just do it to get some experience, but to be good at it too.

LinkedIn is great these days for setting up job alerts and getting notified of new jobs.

If you like more Finance stuff, have a look at investment2020’s job board - they take on interim grads across a number of investment firms.

if you want to build more of a legal understanding up, compliance roles are great ones to consider too.