Year 10 GCSE Work Experience

Hi everyone, nice to meet you all, just joined up, mainly to do this topic, but I now see that the forums will be very useful for all aspects of my GCSE's, A levels and university life.

Well, we recently filled in our application forms for our year 10 GCSE work experience (on Monday) and I realised, that if I wanted to pursue my career, I wasn't going to find it in Wales, the job choices here are very limited according to the form and I don't wish to apply to any of them, as such, I decided to go for self-placement (since according to our careers advisor, self-placement is the only way to get a placement outside the county I'm in (Bridgend).

Well I thought the first thing I'd do when I got home, was hop on the web and do a search, unfortunately, to my suprise, the internet didn't seem to be of any help. I just couldn't find a proper place to advise me on self-placement and no discussions on year 10 work experience....

So I came here, hoping I can get advice from people who took matters into their own hands and went for self-placement. What did you do? How effective was it? What do you recommend I do?

I mainly want a career in the computer games industry (a bit of a popular choice I know, but I am a highly determined person, and not one of those people that want the job because, "games are fun, I love games"), so anyone who has done work experience in the games industry I would especially love to hear from.

I appreciate all comments, and hopefully you guys can help me, from what I've seen, you're all very friendly and have been excellent at helping people out with matters like this.

Thanks for your help!
MarcD

Reply 1

kidda_puttar

I cannot help on a self placement but I can tell you this:

Our careers man said your work experience should not necessarily be connected to your career prospects. It is just there for you to have a feeling of the world of work and employment and to witness and experience it for a short period of time.

If I were you, I'd really not take a complicated route and just select something nearby that you will ENJOY rather than worrying about your career prospects at this stage. Work experience is not for your career, it's for you!

Reply 2

oblivious

my mate got a work placement at sony computer entertainment in liverpool i think though it was more of who you know rather than just asking

Reply 3

soulsussed

I self placed myself, I just heard of a company and got in touch with them. I live in a village and go to a school in the nearest town, all of the placements were for in the town or in the next town, Harrogate. I knew what I wanted to look into, I want to be a designer of some sort so I found a placement in Leeds for a brand communications company. It does advertising and bacically promoting products or brand names. Anyway, I got a great deal out of it. Try not to be too specefic, you might not get in for exactly computer gaming but you could find something along those lines. Try the internet again, if you do your searches right you can find pretty much anything. I actually found my placement through my Dad who works with them, so maybe ask around, I'm not sure.

Reply 4

MarcD

Thank you all for your advice and comments so far.

As well as hearing advice, I'd love to hear how you did your self-placement, and what the experience was like :smile:

I'm starting to look at this with a less narrow-minded attitude, and starting to see I don't have to rigidly stick with computer games for the work experience to be useful, as a result of what you've said so far, and I really appreciate it. Thanks again. :smile:

Reply 5

Bodzie

Work experience like abhineyjain said is to get a feel of working life.

I did my work experience at David lloyd leisure, the fitness and GYM club. I had to do all sorts of stuff, like working in the café area, shadowing a fitness instructor, looking at how the finance department worked. I had a pretty good time.

I wasnt pushed around too much, they really just let you do want you want to do, or at least your not treated like a normal member of staff.

Go with the aim of having a good time, gaining some valuable experience and most of all enjoy it. thats my advice :wink:

Reply 6

JennLlama

At my school (in Scotland) we didn't get anything organised for us - we all *had* to arrange our own placements, though the school tried to help out wherever possible. In fact, I hadn't heard of these form things until I heard about them in the school I'm working in yesterday!
It's perfectly possible to get yourself a placement just by writing to/emailing companies and explaining your situation (you have to do some work experience, are interested in their area...). If you happen to know someone who works somewhere you'd be interested in going (try distance family members and their friends if you have to!) it's likely to be easier, but it's still possible even if you don't. I was lucky as my dad worked for a firm that I was interested in so I arranged a placement there and had a great time. My sister, on the other hand, is just about to do her work experience and has managed to get herself a week in the robotics lab at Edinburgh University (she wants to do AI), after being specifically advised by the careers teacher not even to approach them!
Jenn xx

Reply 7

fabulous_darling

I did my work experience at a university, way back during my GCSE year (it seems so long ago, but it's only two years!). If there's a university near you, you could contact them and see if they can sort you out with something. My work experience at the university was very good, I sampled university life for the first couple of days and then hung around with lecturers and helped with administration, and I also found out a lot about the degree course that I wanted apply for. Even though doing work experience at a university has absolutely no relevance to what I actually want to do in the future, it was still quite enlightening. Maybe you could ask for work experience in the computer department, or something?

Think about contacting a university even if you don't want to do your work experience there - the careers staff are always very helpful and might help you sort out work experiene elswhere as they have oodles and oodles of contacts and information (which is usually reserved for students, but most universities are happy to help people in their GCSE year)

Reply 8

MarcD

Great! Thank you all for your advice. I'm hoping to start writing to companies and establishments over the weekend, so I'll take all of your advice into account when looking for place to go. :smile:

Reply 9

happydinosaur

I did my work experience through self placement even though our school told us not to call companies and ask ourselfs becuase if they wanted to have work experience people then the connections would already be using them. However a local theatre was holding interviews for work experience so I went and got a place. It was fun and showed me that I wanted a career in theatre. Only downside is that we only got a week because were I live there are just more students than places for everyone to have two weeks which sucks