Gap Year Planner Schools out
time was spent going on safari, going to Zanzibar and then he tagged on an extra week to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.” T e rest of Jake’s gap year included an internship at charity, International Needs, and paid work at a summer sports camp. “Employers don’t want to see a student has just been on holiday for a year,” says Dan Hawes of the Graduate Recruitment Bureau. “T ey want to see students developing transferable skills.” And it’s not just what they do either, it’s how they sell those experiences to employers. “Students sometimes say, ‘I’m not sure what to put on my CV as I just went travelling’, but they’re not thinking hard enough,” continues Hawes. “T ere will be some instances when they got in a tricky situation or ran out of money and had to think on their feet, and they should fl ag up those times as a positive.” Nothing speaks louder to future
employers than work experience, which is why either some form of work is so important in a gap year. “We meet many students at the careers fairs. T e ones who stand out are those who have worked, even if they haven’t been around the world,” says Hawes. “T ey show commercial awareness. T ey ‘get it’.” Internships are becoming increasingly
more popular. “So many graduates are fl ooding the market, that employers can aff ord to be picky,” says Hawes. High academic achievement is no longer a golden ticket to a top job and students have to do more to stand out from the crowd. Paul de Zulueta, of graduate consultancy, Lifestep, agrees. “By the time you’ve got to the end of university, it’s too late,” he says. “To make yourself employable, you have to start early.” He goes on to explain that the internship recruitment process with companies such as Deloitte, Accenture and KPMG tends to start a whole year in advance (see boxed copy above). Planning ahead is vital, and should start this summer. T is is something where many students fall down, as planning an internship needs to be done as far in advance as possible. “We always say, try and plan ahead, but unfortunately students do often leave the planning of their internship to the last minute,” says Hawes. T e best work placements and voluntary placements abroad will be taken by the Autumn but parents and students can get
www.fi rstelevenmagazine.co.uk
Step-by-step guide to securing a gap year internship
Autumn term Online application: be prepared to fi ll in a numerical/verbal reasoning test Spring term Telephone interview: successful candidates spend a day at an assessment centre which culminates in a face-to-face interview. If they pass this stage, candidates are invited for a fi nal interview with a director at the end of March. Successful candidates will start their internship in the following September. Internships tend to last 25-28 weeks, leaving at least six months free before the start of the academic year ● For further information on Lifestep and how it helps young people fulfi l their employment potential
www.lifestep.co.uk
Paul de Zulueta of Lifestep
this sort of advice from one of the consultancies off ering to help plan a good gap year, fi nding the right balance between fun and future planning. John Vessey, former Senior Master at Eton and director of Gap Enterprise, believes that “it is a holistic approach which develops the full potential for those valuable 15 months between school and university – time management, income, skills, experience, travel and plenty of fun.” T at said, there are situations, where taking a full year out prior to university is not the best option. While on the whole, universities welcome well-planned gap years, there are some courses where it can be a disadvantage. T e admissions guide for maths undergraduates at Cambridge, for example, warns of the danger of going “stale” or “off the boil” during a gap year. In 2011, many students have struck a gap
year off the agenda to take advantage of lower tuition fees before the planned rise in 2012. T at doesn’t mean they will miss out on the “gap” style experience however. “T ere’s been a defi nite development,” confi rms Gent. “Initially, the programmes were all aimed at students taking a full gap year.
T en they started to develop shorter programmes designed for university vacations.” Projects Abroad have even introduced a
“Gap Month” for students who want to volunteer abroad but don’t have long, off ering greater fl exibility to students whose future rests in the hands of university admissions. Students booking with T e Leap this year can pay a deposit on a trip that could start in either September, January or April – but if they get a place at university and start immediately, they are able to transfer their place to next July and do it during their university summer holiday instead. T e company is anticipating more than a
few last-minute gappers. “Competition for university places this year is greater than ever,” explains Alice Baines of T e Leap. “T ere are the students who didn’t get a place last year who are re-applying and then all those keen to get a year of university done before the tuition fee rise. Not all will get places and many will decide on a gap year. People should have a back-up plan.” When planning a gap year, consider the possibility that some graduates fi nd themselves on enforced gap years at the other end of their degree. Either they can’t get jobs or as in the case of the last couple of years, graduates with confi rmed training contracts have been paid signifi cant amounts of money to come back in a year’s time,” says Gent. Project Trust is another company worth looking at – they are very effi cient at combining work experience with travelling and are widely respected as one of the most experienced gap year organisations.
While many graduates would welcome the idea of being paid to take a gap year, for those who had already taken one before their degree, this can be a further delay to embarking on their career. “T is is why I’m in favour of a gap year that is directly linked to your career,” concludes Gent. When students are spending a year interning in industry or learning a language they are making an investment in their future.
Web links The Leap
www.theleap.co.uk Projects Abroad
www.projects-abroad.org Project Trust
www.projecttrust.org.uk
Summer 2011 FirstEleven 77
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