[KayleeLand]

I'm having a go at creating a one-stop resource bank for volunteering, internships and work experience. So have a look in here for help getting that placement. It would be great if people who have volunteered or had an internship or work experience placement could share their experience with others.

Below there is a sample format that could be useful to cover the basics. People seem to want to know how to get placements and contact companies, so detailed information here would be appreciated.

If you have any other tips you want to include and don't want to use the format, feel free!
Thanks

Sample format:

Name –

Where did you volunteer –

How did you get the placement –

How long was the placement –

Outline of duties/responsibilities –

Website links or information –

Anything else –

[KayleeLand]

Here are some useful websites to help people find placements and for more information.

Year In Industry - Provides placements for students both here in the UK and abroad.

Personal Overseas Development (POD) - Not for profit volunteering around the world.

Volunteer South America - lists a whole variety of volunteering placements in South America, ranging from medicine to caring for tortoises.

Prospects - information and placements aimed at students and graduates, includes case studies and a forum.

Graduate Talent Pool - is a DirectGov website to search for internships.

Mountbatten Institute - paid internships in business all around the world.

[aliciathompson]

Hi!

I've recently finished my university course and I was trying to find an internship or placement to get some work experience. A friend of mine suggested I tried www.internwise.co.uk, I signed up, applied for a few positions and got an interview straight away! Specially for marketing or business related positions, it seems to be quite good.

To sum up, it's another tool that you may want to use to find a job

Website: http://www.internwise.co.uk

Cheers

[Don John]

Name – Jon Baldie

Where did you volunteer – The Vibe

How did you get the placement – Applied for promotion (originally a comment writer)

How long was the placement – 3 months

Outline of duties/responsibilities – Acting Deputy Editor, sub-editing articles, submitting daily news stories, interviewed David Miliband, which got us to 6th best non-aligned blog, according to Total Politics magazine

Website links or information – http://www.the-vibe.co.uk

Anything else –

[londonbeeb]

Here's what I spent my summer doing:

Name – Rebecca

Where did you volunteer (it was an internship - with pay) – Business In The Community

How did you get the placement – I was placed there, as a Bank of America Student Leader. I had to apply for 1 of 5 places in London.

How long was the placement – 8 weeks (1 week was spent on a Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., all expenses paid)

Outline of duties/responsibilities – Differs according to department, but mine included researching, writing reports, attending meetings, giving presentations, attending the leadership summit which included seminars, etc. All of these had a focus around community/charitable work and getting businesses involved (Corporate philanthropy)

Website links or information – http://www.bankofamerica.com/foundat...studentleaders .

Also, here's an info video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX2uw2TV158

Anything else – One of the best things I've ever done. Inspirational experience, I'd pay to do it all again.

For more information, give me a shout out.

[~ Purple Rose ~]

I have done voluntary work for two organisations, I will do one now and the other hopefully in the next couple of days.

Name – Me

Where did you volunteer – Vitalise

How did you get the placement – Filled in the form on the website.

How long was the placement – One week, but I have done it four times - one week at Sandpipers, one at Netley and two at Churchtown.

Outline of duties/responsibilities – They are holiday centres for disabled people. You are responsible for helping a guest to get up/dressed/down to breakfast and most days you also go out on a trip, probably helping a different guest. You then help out at dinner time, either giving out meals etc, or helping a guest eat. In the evening there is usually some entertainment like a singer, so you will help out with whatever needs to be done. Usually you get a break either around 7-9pm, or you finish at 9pm, and start at around 7/7.30, depending on the centre and how many guests there are. At Sandpipers and Netley there were around 40 and when I went to Churchtown there were less than ten both times, but that centre has had some changes since I was there last.

Website links or information – www.vitalise.org.uk

Anything else – Exhausting, but definitely worth doing

[Rugar]

Where did you volunteer – An interfaith charity

How did you get the placement – w4mp job board

How long was the placement – Still going, since June (supposed to be just two months)

Outline of duties/responsibilities – Admin, data entry, and recently researching things for future projects

Anything else – its unpaid and i'm only staying cos i cant find full time work yet...

[*mMmMm*]

thanks

[Vindobona]

Name – David

Where did you volunteer – It was a paid placement at a destination management company in Toronto, Canada.

How did you get the placement – I applied to many tourism-related companies in different countries, and they were one of the few that gave me an offer.

How long was the placement – 22 weeks, so a bit longer than 5 months.

Outline of duties/responsibilities – Created costing sheets, compiled formal proposals of leisure tours as well as corporate programs for clients, negotiated rates and booked services with different types of suppliers, coordinated incoming and outgoing payments, wrote and sent out service contracts and vouchers, updated databases and did site inspections across Canada.

Website links or information – www.ctidmc.com

[paxy]

Im volunteering as an elected member of the Youth Cabinet for Northumberland. It looks great on my UCAS forms being able to say i helped organise Northumberlands biggest youth elections and other events such as climate change competitions and charity events. But dont do it for the UCAS form though, just to have a great time and help represent the young voice

[Gloriette]

Name – Gloriette

Where did you volunteer – Ubud, Bali (Indonesia)

How did you get the placement – I contacted the organisation per email, with my CV.

How long was the placement – 2 months

Outline of duties/responsibilities – shop management (including marketing, advertising and promotion)

Website links or information – http://www.freewebs.com/balidogs/thecharityshop.htm

Anything else – this was a voluntary position, in other words, I did not get any pay. But they helped me to find very cheap hotel accommodation. I really believe I learnt a lot about management in general during this work experience. Additionally, I had lots of spare time to explore the island.... so it was the perfect combination of doing something useful and having fun

[~ Purple Rose ~]

Name – Me

Where did you volunteer – Over the Wall

How did you get the placement – Filled in the form on the website and then attended an information/interview day.

How long was the placement – One week, at their Dorset camp.

Outline of duties/responsibilities – They are camps for children with life-limiting illnesses. The campers are split into teams of about 8, all boys or girls, and around the same age. You aren't told more then the essential facts about their condition, so tend to only find out about it if they decide to tell you. But conditions can be cancer/heart problems/diabetes etc. The volunteers arrived on Sunday and the children on Monday, and everyone left on Friday. There were various sessions throughout the day of different activities e.g. arts and crafts, fishing, climbing, horse riding, swimming, and also sessions where your campers could choose what they wanted to do. Volunteers were there to support them/take them to the nurses room for their medication/remind them if they had any medical needs they did themselves and helping them during the activities. In the evening there were talent shows/discos etc. The food was brilliant - worth going for in itself

Website links or information – www.otw.org.uk

Anything else – Exhausting, but a great experience. I am not great with kids and was very anxious about this, but I learnt a lot, and enjoyed it mostly. The one thing that made it slightly less good was a couple of the other volunteers in my team. They didn't understand how difficult it was for me to even be there and made some snide and not-so-snide comments, which was pretty embarrassing infront of all the staff and other volunteers, but at the end of the day I got a lot out of it and when you are put together with strangers there will always be clashes, as long as you don't let them interfere with what you are actually there to do.

[Ilustrius]

Name – Rob

Where did you volunteer – Crossroads Foundation, Hong Kong

How did you get the placement – Applied online, and made a phone call or two

How long was the placement – 8 weeks

Outline of duties/responsibilities – Goods delivery, storage, logistics

Website links or information – Search google: Crossroads Foundation

Anything else – I was apprehensive at first, because it was full time and completely unpaid. But I went through with it, and it really wasn't as bad I thought it would be. I met lots of people, and it was better than wasting my time on computer games at home. It looks great on a CV, particularly for undergraduate students with little to no experience of full time work.

I haven't requested feedback for my current internship applications yet, but I'm quite optimistic about securing a 6 week internship with a small wealth management firm this summer (having done the interview, which I thought went quite well). I also got through the CV/cover letter stage for an internship with a big investment consulting firm.

My point is, charity work is worth the hassle for any CV. Especially if it is unpaid and extensive (e.g. for a minimum of 6 weeks).

[farawayheartbeat]

Name – Lindsey Partridge

1. Where did you volunteer – Chessington World of Adventures (surrey, england)

How did you get the placement – i applied for work experience by ringing the facility and then applied through email after being directed how to, a cover letter and a CV, and enjoyed it so much I asked to apply as a weekly volunteer

How long was the placement – once a week, for almost 2 years now. For worke experience, it was 2 weeks. But you apply for however long you want to work for.

Outline of duties/responsibilities – lots of cleaning, watching training sessions, helping with the shows, assisting the animal trainers, food prep etc. As I progressed I got more hands on time with the animals until, at this point, I can do basic training sessions with certain animals, and handle them all, etc.

Website links or information – http://www.chessington.com/

2.
Where did you volunteer – Dolphin Quest (Bermuda)

How did you get the placement – i applied through the website, a cover letter, CV, and an application form, and had a telephone interview.

How long was the placement – 40 hours a week for 4.5 months

Outline of duties/responsibilities – fish prep, cleaning, interacting with guests, watching and assisting in training sessions and guest interaction programs, talking on the mic to guests for an educational talk, photography, and occasionally, doing training sessions with the dolphins under supervision of the trainers, as we progress we do more behaviours etc.

Website links or information – http://www.dolphinquest.com/

Anything else – i want to be an animal trainer, and so these two are experience to get me there.

[Graduate Recruitment Bureau]

Great thread - I'll mention this to our members.

[love2dive]

Name –Stephanie

Where did you volunteer – Leytey, The Philippines

How did you get the placement – I searched online a marine conservation group

How long was the placement – 6 weeks volunteering abroad

Outline of duties/responsibilities – Dive Training, Skills development programme, Survey Dives

Website links or information – http://www.coralcay.org

Anything else – Coral Cay Conservation is an internationally renowned marine conservation charity dedicated to providing the resources to help protect coral reefs and tropical rainforests throughout the developing world.

[love2dive]

I discovered Coral Cay online about two years ago when I was looking for an internship over the summer. Unfortunately CCC did not have internships outside of their London headquarters but Peter Mandara who replied to my email informed me about their local scholarships. However I didn’t have the time to make the one month stay in Southern Leyte as it was a bit far from Manila and I had schoolwork to finish. Two years later though, after graduating from university, I was finally able to apply for the CCC dive scholarship. It took less than a month for me to be accepted into the program and fly to Leyte.
As soon as I got to the base camp I started sweating more than I had ever sweated in my entire life, and that’s saying a lot having grown up in the Philippines. I met some of the staff and volunteers and was given a tour of how things were run in the place. In a nutshell we had to get up by 6:30-7:00 every day, do our chores such as make breakfast/mop the floors/wash up, kit up, and then get our butts into the water for some world class diving. After that I met my first roommates, Lou and Nonny, who were super nice and accommodating. The room was simple with 3 bunk beds and view of the sea. We each had our own little electric fans and there was a little bathroom with no running water but there were two black buckets, one for salt water and one for fresh water which we had to fill up every now and then. At dinner I met the rest of staff and volunteers.
My first week was spent doing all my dive training up to advance open water certification. It was face paced and demanding trying to remember all the diving terms and basic scuba skills that were mentioned in the videos, theories and knowledge reviews. I also learned how to put together my dive kit, the most challenging task of which was hauling around the air tanks which, me being only 5’0 tall, were almost half my height. I remember during my first ever dive I had to walk down to the beach a few minutes away from the base. Imagine trudging through a narrow dirt footpath in a full wetsuit, carrying a tank on your back, a weight belt wrapped around your waist and fins in your hands in 38 degree Celsius weather. It was not a pretty sight but it made getting into the water so much more satisfying. Once under the sea all my worries went away and it was so amazing to just see all the fish and corals. The 30 minutes or so of my first dive went by far too fast in my opinion.
My introduction to the underwater world was a blur of colours and new sensations that kept me going through all the other dives and skills I had to do. Completing the tired diver tow with Maarten, one of the scuba instructors, was no easy feat. Another memorable dive was my first experience with a remora. I was doing peak performance buoyancy with Jesse, the other scuba instructor, when out of nowhere this very daring and curious fish started hovering around me and attached itself to my leg. I was freaking out of course and Jesse was just laughing, signalling it was ok. “You try doing buoyancy exercises with a remora sucking your leg” I wanted to retort. By the end of the week I had logged in all the necessary dives, passed all my knowledge reviews and was a certified advance open water diver. I thought that the hard part was over and done with but I was in for a surprise.
SDP training began with a simple enough lecture on corals. Acropora and non acropora. Check. Tabulate, branching, bottlebrush, etc... Check. Diploastrea heliopora, porites rus, goniopora/alveopora... not check. Learning the species names, in Latin to boot, definitely had me studying these hard corals well into the night. The other volunteers were really helpful and sweet about it though. They helped the SDP people with flashcards on land and pointys in the water. The same was done with inverts, algae and fish. The science officers, Jen and Luke, also gave us tips on how to remember the names of everything such as “you can’t put a durex on a murex”. It was a lot of work but also pretty cool to learn all the sea critters and corals. Diving suddenly became more interesting because I could identify what I saw in the water. Fish of the day nominations after dinner also started to make more sense and it was such a thrill to see rare creatures like Joey the resident hawksbill turtle.
Once I had passed all the exams and validations it was finally time to do surveys! I was a bit worried at first that I would mess up or forget something. Carrying reels, coral lines, salinity bottles, slates and fish buoys was a daunting task. Plus you had to remember to do everything assigned to you depending on whether you were the physical, coral, fish or inverts/algae person. In fact the first survey my SDP group attempted didn’t go so well. We ran out of time underwater before we completed the 50 metre line. But the next surveys went smoothly and we slowly got the hang of things. By the end of my stay I had completed more than a dozen MPA surveys and a few baseline surveys.
Life in Napantao was full of surprises everyday. From chicken eggs hatching to hauling the boat up to the beach during a storm, walking an hour and half to San Francisco town, getting attacked by coconut beetles on a nightly basis, running after the ducks, chilling out on the porch, trying to keep Choco Mucho consumption to a reasonable level, playing the Village and Shop, watching films like Blue Planet, having a bonfire down by the beach, watching the sunset, keeping an eye out for whale sharks, dolphins, pilot whales and shoals of fish, and people getting sunburnt. There were also local discos and karaoke on Saturday nights, manicures, massages, night dives, fending off nesting titan triggerfish, painting a wall in the sweltering summer heat, accidentally tasting tawas, chasing and being chased by spiders, and having a Napantao open day for the local kids.
I loved seeing another side of my country which I would have otherwise missed. To be immersed in the simplicity of life in those parts was a humbling experience. Things I took for granted at home like air conditioning, internet and running water were some comforts that I learned to do without. I appreciated them more when I got home but also liked the uncomplicatedness in the province. It was nice to not have the TV blasting and instead sit under a tree full of fireflies and look at the stars while listening to the waves lapping the sea wall.
Talking and hanging out with the volunteers was also another unique part of the expedition. People came from all walks of life and it was fascinating to learn British slang terms like “knackered” and “no worries”. Trying to understand the local dialect, Bisaya, was also fun. Hailing from Manila I am used to a mix of English and Filipino so Bisaya was quite different. Talking with the local staff was also nice. It was inspiring to see the dedication Dag (Community Liaison Officer) has towards his work in conservation and comforting to know that the Medical Officer was always there with a solution to any and every ailment. It was cool to just chill out and trade life stories. I loved how everyone was so comfortable and open with one another and that there was always something new to learn or simply just laugh about.
My 6 weeks with CCC went by in a happy blur and the term sweet exhaustion was never more apt. It was a demanding but thoroughly satisfying time. What started out as something of an interest has become a sort of life direction. It took a few weeks detached from city life and the hustle and bustle of the metro for me to gain some perspective and for that I am very grateful. I am currently in the process of looking for a job and I am happy to say there are a bunch of conservation NGOs in the Philippines who are fighting the good fight. I look forward to start working for one and continue what my experience with Coral Cay started, a love for marine conservation. I hope to get more people aware of the beauty that lies beneath the ocean waves and help out in their own little ways. I am glad to see how others are doing what they can to save the coral reefs and I hope that the message will reach the government and the people loud and clear, we need to act now and save what’s left. Also I am very excited to do more diving around my country and hopefully do more surveys with other NGOs and expeditions. Cheers!
p.s.
Thank you so much to the staff, international and local (Lou, Kate, Jen, Luke, Maarten, Rob, Jesse, Jigs, Bokbok, Tata, Ricky, Dag, Marvin, Ben) and all the volunteers and people of Coral Cay who made my stay a truly amazing once in a lifetime eye opening opportunity.

Stephanie.A

[good morning]

Where did you volunteer – my local hospital, in the 4 clinical labs and the pharmacy

How did you get the placement – picked a department, rang the hospital switchboard and said "can you put me through to (insert department name) please" then said to the head of that department that im looking for work experience to persue a career in medicine.

How long was the placement – 1 week in clinical labs, 2 days in pharmacy

Outline of duties/responsibilities – just watching, however in the clinical labs they made mock samples for me to test which was great.

Anything else – make sure you get a letter or reference outlining that you attended and this can also be used to prove you attended to universities ect. and make the most of it, alot of places (especially in hospitals) have bad experiences of work expereince students who go for a week in GCSE's and arnt particulary interested and are just there because they need to be. so make the most of it and show an interest

any more questions about my work experience or anything then please pm me

[Dee Leigh]

Great thread

Another one is Milkround as well. I've heard it's good but I have yet to apply for interships. If you want, the link is in my sig, you can sign up like I did and get updates.

Also a while ago someone recommended fashionworkie.com. Don't know if it's legit though anyone know?

[ChannieAlana]

Whatever you do DO NOT take an internship with CRCC Asia.

They will let anyone in and are poorly organised and I ended up getting harassed by another internship member because she "didn't like the look of me" and she spat in my face and was verbally abusing me.

Having confronted them as I felt intimidated, CRCC Asia did NOTHING and kept her on the course (despite them stating in the T&Cs that bullies would be removed from the accommodation) and it got to the stage where she kicked my bedroom door down and 2girls had to restrain her from punching me and I had to change rooms through the hotel and yet they STILL did nothing and I spent my entire time in Beijing being scared ****less of her.

Also friends of mine had rubbish internships that were poorly organised and some people left their internships after the first week because they were so poorly organised and demanded to change internships and even one girl changed her flights so that she could leave after only being in Beijing for 10days as she was appalled.

If you want to do an internship in Beijing, go with another cheaper company and don't fork out 2grand (like I did) on being stuck in a foreign country being threatened and the company doing jack **** about it.