| Carl Andrew | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
A degree is not enough. These days, students have to do much more than study in order to make themselves employable once they graduate. They are forced into a balancing act as they juggle their time between their degree, extracurricular activities and that golden nugget of CV enhancement: work experience or internship.
From the moment they begin their degree, students now must look for the best ways to make themselves marketable. Leaving it late (I started building my CV in the second year) has made me realise just how much this put me at a disadvantage.
Joining student societies is not necessarily just a matter of personal interest or enjoyment. Serving as president of the Fifa Appreciation Society, the Free Hugs Society (does pretty much what it says on the tin) or the Comic Books Society is not going to look very impressive on your CV. Employers are far more likely to look for students who have instead been president of their university's politics, history or debating society.
This can also be harmful for the societies when students join them, or seek positions within them, purely to boost their employability. Last year, I turned away a student from the Just Vote campaign I was organising (to encourage voting in the general election) when he mentioned that his CV was the only reason he was planning to come on board. Hypocritical though this may seem, it made me realise he would not put in the full effort this position needed and was purely applying for personal ambition.
The same can be said of the unpaid work experience that I and many of my friends undertook during the summer. This was not wholly for my CV, but also partly to help me decide which career I wanted to follow.
It is true that the bigger the name of the company where you do work experience the better it looks on your CV. But that does not necessarily mean you will gain any useful experience with a big-name organisation.
A friend of mine dropped out of a placement with a well-known NGO after one week due to the lack of experience she was getting, and the way she was treated as the office slave. She argued that making coffee, photocopying articles and filing offered no real benefit for her – though her friends thought she was foolish to give up this opportunity.
At a recent careers event, I listened to other students talk of how they spent every available week during the university holidays in placements at different companies, constantly attempting to enhance their CV and chasing that improbable goal of getting a job guaranteed before finishing their degree.
It disheartened me, and scared me, as I realised that I would never be able to replicate the number of work experience placements they had managed.
The pressures on students to make themselves the perfect job candidates are huge, and they are forced to look for new and creative ways to make themselves stand out from the crowd. Interning in another country is one such example, such as the intern scheme for UK students at the US Congress. The scheme is unpaid and a very costly; and students have to fund their own time there, so, as with many similar opportunities, it is purely for those who have the money. But for those who can afford it, the career benefits probably outweigh the costs.
University is becoming less a time for lazing around and more about building up experiences and creating connections. With more applicants to university each year, and fewer jobs, it looks as if the task is getting even more difficult for students as the expectations become higher.
