Before university, it’s easy to assume that ‘real’ work experience only comes from landing a highly competitive internship at a big company. You can feel a bit disheartened seeing your peers on LinkedIn announcing spring weeks, placements, and graduate schemes, and it can feel like everyone else already has a clear path while you’re still trying to figure things out.

The reality is usually much less polished than it looks online. Most students don’t build experience through one standout opportunity. Instead, they accumulate it gradually through part-time jobs, student roles, small freelance projects, and opportunities that don’t always look impressive at the time.

By the end of your degree, those smaller experiences often matter far more than you initially realise. The challenge is learning to recognise them while you’re still building them.

Start with what your university already offers

One of the easiest places to begin is with your own university, because there are often far more opportunities than students think.

Writing for a student newspaper is a strong example. I’ve written for both Unifresher and my university newspaper, ROAR News, and what’s been interesting is how quickly those roles build real, transferable skills. You learn how to work to deadlines, edit your own writing, respond to feedback, and adapt your tone depending on the audience. Even if you’re not planning to go into journalism, those are exactly the kinds of skills that translate into marketing, communications, and a wide variety of corporate roles later on.

The same applies to societies and student-led organisations. I have worked as a Student Representative for my course and taken on a Campus Ambassador role for the events app Partiful which have both given me a lot of exposure to communication, organisation, and promotion. These roles often start small but naturally expand into more responsibility if you show initiative.

It’s important to not focus on whether a role is ‘relevant enough’ to what you want to do in the future — if it helps you practice communication, organising, or working with others, it’s going to be useful.

Don’t underestimate part-time work

A lot of students separate ‘student jobs’ from real experience, especially when working in hospitality or retail, but employers rarely view it that way.

I’ve worked in hospitality both before and during university, including returning to a previous job over the summer and working at a street food restaurant in London alongside my degree. On paper, it didn’t seem to me directly related to the fields I wanted to go into. But, in reality, it builds exactly the kind of skills employers look for: time management, resilience, communication, and the ability to stay calm under pressure.

Additionally, I’ve done some more flexible, short-term work such as brand ambassador roles, including promoting the Vauxhall Grandland in a shopping centre over a weekend. It wasn’t a long-term position, but it required constant interaction with the public, adapting my communication style quickly, and representing a brand in real time, which is much closer to marketing than it initially appears.

To me, these experiences felt small individually, but together, they built my confidence and consistency, which is what helped to strengthen my CV.

Use social media as a job search tool, not just entertainment

Social media is increasingly one of the most underrated ways students find opportunities.

I actually found one of my writing roles through TikTok after coming across an advert for RADGE Magazine, which has grown massively over the past year. At first, it didn’t register as a ‘career opportunity’ in any serious sense, but it ended up giving me three useful pieces of writing for my portfolio.

Even Unifresher popped up as an advert as I was tapping through Instagram stories, and writing for them has given me such valuable experience.

That’s something I’ve noticed more broadly: student magazines, small media platforms, and creative start-ups often recruit informally through TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn before anything appears on traditional job boards.

Once you start following the right people and organisations, opportunities begin to appear passively in your feed, which makes it easier to discover things you wouldn’t have actively searched for.

Create your own opportunities

Some of my most valuable work experience I’ve had didn’t come from applications at all, but from reaching out directly.

During university, I was interested in gaining more experience in videography and marketing, so I contacted a local housing improvements company and ended up working alongside their customer experience manager to film customer testimonial content. It wasn’t a formal internship, but it gave me practical, hands-on experience that I wouldn’t have accessed otherwise.

Before university, I did something similar by emailing local companies and securing short-term work experience in both marketing and at a regional news agency. Most of these emails didn’t lead anywhere, but the few that did ended up being some of the most useful experiences I’ve had.

Don’t ignore LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of those things students tend to avoid until their final year, but it becomes useful much earlier than people expect.

I’ve used it to stay connected with people I met during a Year 12 work placement, and those relationships ended up being directly linked to the internship I’m at this summer. That experience alone made me realise how much of work experience is actually bout timing and maintaining connections rather than constantly starting from scratch.

Posting on LinkedIn also doesn’t need to feel overly professional. Sharing what you’re working on, even if it feels small, helps build a digital footprint over time that can lead to conversations and opportunities later on.

Where to actually look for opportunities

If you’re not sure where to begin, there are a few places that are consistently useful.

LinkedIn is the obvious one, particularly for internships and graduate roles, but platforms like Bright Network and Forage are also strong depending on the industry you’re interested in.

University careers services are also often overlooked, despite the fact they frequently have exclusive opportunities that never appear on public job boards.

And increasingly, platforms like TikTok are becoming informal job discovery tools in their own right, particularly for smaller creative organisations.