Global Employability Assistant – University of Exeter

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What were your main duties and responsibilities during the course of your internship?

The main objective of my role was to provide administrative support to the Employment Services Teams in the Career Zone (Global & UK). My main responsibility was to upload  vacancies on to CareerHub, and so this required acquiring all the necessary information from the employers beforehand, and formatting vacancy advertisements so that they were accessible to students looking to apply. For this reason, I had to liaise with employers via email about the positions they were offering, and create an online vacancy based on the information provided. I also carried out some ad hoc work, such as flyering for our careers fairs and inputting data about our employer contacts.

What would you say was your biggest achievement over the course of your internship?

I have learnt a considerable amount about the application process for graduate schemes by being ‘behind the scenes’; uploading vacancies on a day-to-day basis has highlighted to me what it is that employers are looking for, and how to succeed in filling out tricky application forms. Also, I am a lot more familiar with Microsoft Office, for instance I dreaded using Excel before and avoided it at all costs, but now I have been shown how to use it correctly and efficiently, I will certainly be using it more in the workplace.

What benefits did your internship bring to your employer?

A lot of my work for the CareerZone required autonomy, especially because I was split between two departments (Global & UK Vacancies), so I would say that I helped my colleagues most by working efficiently and getting tasks done swiftly. One of the tasks I worked on was uploading a number of Studentships to CareerHub, and I composed a spread sheet to keep a log of what ones had been uploaded/deleted, which others can use as a reference. Also, I helped out the careers fairs by flyering around the university; I was therefore more than happy to carry out additional tasks besides my main responsibility of uploading vacancies.

Did you encounter any problems during the course of your internship and if so, how did you overcome them?

Sometimes in quieter periods there would be a shortage in vacancies, which, as a main part of my job role, meant I had little to do. I overcame this by asking around the office for ad hoc tasks and helped out wherever I could. It was never a major problem as someone always had a task for me to do.

“Paige has provided essential support during her time with me, and has been a pleasure to have in the office” – Line Manager