Work Experience Week: A Student’s Perspective

January 2026 – Reading time 3 minutes | Written by Blake Oliver’s year 10 work experience students

Work experience is very important for students because it gives a real understanding of what working life is actually like. Many young people go through school without knowing much about the types of jobs adults do or what a workplace feels like day to day.

Spending even a few days in a real workplace helps students gain hands-on experience in an industry they’re interested in or curious about. It helps them see the expectations, responsibilities, and skills needed for different roles.

Why Work Experience Matters for Students

For students who are unsure about their career direction, work experience can be especially helpful. Seeing how people interact, communicate, and manage their time in a workplace is very different from learning about it at school.

Work experience also helps students build practical skills that will support them in the future, including:

Problem-solving
Time management
Communication
Confidence and independence

This kind of exposure can’t be fully taught in the classroom. It often sparks new interests, builds confidence, and can even guide future subject choices.

How Work Experience Helps Schools

Work experience doesn’t only benefit students; it supports schools too. Teachers can’t provide personalised career guidance to every student, and they can’t recreate a real workplace environment within the classroom.

By allowing students to explore the professional world themselves, schools encourage:

More independent learning
Greater responsibility and maturity
Stronger community connections through local business partnerships

Why Businesses Benefit Too

Businesses also gain a lot by hosting work experience students. It gives companies the opportunity to:

Showcase their industry and workplace culture
Introduce students to different career pathways
Encourage staff to mentor and share their knowledge
Spot potential future talent early

It’s a valuable experience for everyone involved.

Our Week at Blake Oliver

Our week at Blake Oliver has been incredibly valuable. We’ve gained a much deeper understanding of the recruitment and marketing industry.

During our time here, we learned about the different stages of recruitment, such as sourcing and screening candidates through to shortlisting, interviewing, and assisting clients in finding the best fit for their team.

We saw how essential this work is for companies that want to focus on their own operations while recruiters take on the task of finding strong, reliable employees.

Learning More Than We Expected

Before this placement, we didn’t realise recruitment was an industry on its own. Since having a work experience placement at Blake Oliver, we were able to branch out and explore career paths outside of what we are naturally drawn to, including the marketing side of the firm.

We also gained a new outlook on marketing, realising that it is not just creative, but also involves connecting with people, building trust, and helping the business grow.

Both of us also enjoyed the creative side of the work. Designing advertisements and putting together job listings was fun and helped us understand how marketing connects to recruitment. We explored some of the tools the team uses, such as design platforms and email marketing systems, which make the whole process more efficient. Using Canva to design ads + posts was one of our favourite parts, and it made us realise how much creativity can go into it.

We also learned how to play pool, which was a relaxing and social part of the experience.

Overall, our time at Blake Oliver taught us new skills, offered new perspectives, helped us discover that recruitment is a field we’re interested in, and provided real-life insight into how workplaces operate.