This week is #WEWeek2015 (Work Experience Week 2015), a week dedicated to raising awareness of the benefits that work experience can bring and celebrating the opportunities it can open up.
As part of this we caught up with our Marketing Executive, Alison German RVN, to find out how work experience shaped her working life.
What is your first recollection of work experience?
The first time I went on work experience was in secondary school; having developed a love of animals from a young age, going to a veterinary practice was a natural choice to me.
Fortunately, I was lucky enough to be accepted at a practice a few miles from where I lived. Whilst on work experience I had the opportunity to be involved in many different aspects of practice life; from cleaning cages and feeding animals to sitting in on consultations and watching operations. Once I had finished, my mind was made up that becoming a veterinary nurse was the career for me (even though I did nearly faint during the first operation I watched!).
During my time there, I discovered that the practice had a couple of evening and Saturday staff who would come in for a few hours to clean and do some of the housekeeping jobs around the practice such as taking the post, doing the laundry and restocking products in reception. I made sure the practice knew that I would be interested if one of those jobs became available. Luckily for me, a while later one did and I held this job alongside studying animal care at The College of Animal Welfare for a year.
As I came to the end of my one year animal care course I was very lucky to be offered a paid position as a student veterinary nurse at this practice. I then attended college on a day release basis for two years, qualifying in 1999 after successfully passing all my exams.
What tips do you have for anyone about to undertake work experience?
This is your opportunity to get involved and make a good impression – you will only get out what you put in!
Be grateful and show you are keen to get involved; ask questions and learn new things. It can be nerve wracking going in to a working environment for the first time but that is completely normal and you will come out a much better person for it.
Hopefully as my story will demonstrate, if you make a good impression, who knows where it could lead. For me it was a job and a career, it could be the same for you!
Take a look at animal care and veterinary nursing courses at The College of Animal Welfare.