Summer Activities to Boost Student Career Prospects

We all love thinking about our dream jobs, but how can we work towards getting there? For starters, it’s never too early to be thinking about boosting your career prospects.

No matter what your dream job is, it’s always good to think about how you can make yourself look attractive to future employers or a university's applications department. The actions that you take during your GCSEs and A-Levels, and during these summers, can be the building blocks for success.

Employers don’t only look at your grades - they love proactive students who are hungry to learn and grow. So, how can we prove that we are top candidates? Let’s go through 5 activities that you can use to boost your career prospects. 

We’ll walk through how to get started and how to make each activity a part of your routine. These tips and tricks will help you grow professionally, helping you to stand out as a top candidate for any role. Regardless of what your dream job is, hopefully, this blog will help you unlock your potential!

1. Set Yourself Goals

Being successful begins with setting yourself clear, actionable goals that get you on your way to where you want to be. Get help with ideas from your parents, or use feedback from an online tutor or your school teacher before the end of the term.

How should you set goals?

Start each week by writing down five well-thought-out, very specific SMART goals that you aim to achieve. For example, you may write that you want to complete an English past paper question by the end of the week, or even that you want to email at least one employer about getting a part-time job.

Try to grow by 1% every day rather than reinvent yourself overnight - continuous small improvements are better than no improvements.

Everyone loves to be ambitious, but try to set measurable, achievable goals, so that you can track your progress over time. Goal setting in this way helps you stay motivated without a challenge being too overwhelming to finish. Don't forget to celebrate or reward small wins. This gives us all the motivation to keep growing.

What if you don’t finish your goals?

The key to mastering goal setting is self discipline - be honest with yourself about gaps in your skills or certain weaknesses and try to work on them one small step at a time. 

It’s also important to forgive yourself and forget about any goals you missed rather than give up the process entirely. Every missed goal is a lesson about how to make the next goal better.

When I started goal setting, I was quite a shy person, so I made it a goal of mine to talk to five new people every week. The result of setting myself this goal is that I’m now more confident, and I feel comfortable leading classes and lessons as a GCSE English tutor. 

If you’re struggling to think of your strengths and weaknesses, it’s always good to talk to those around you for second opinions. Whether it’s friends, family or teachers, listen to their input on how you can boost your career prospects - but always make your goals your own.

2. Build Your Brand

Your personal brand describes what you stand for, so it’s a big part of what sets you apart from others. It allows employers to view the full spectrum of the person behind the academic records. The question is, how do we go about creating a brand that helps us stand out?

Start with a CV

Firstly, think about creating a strong CV. A CV, or curriculum vitae, is a document that summarises your skills, your academic and work experience and your achievements. It’s a powerful document that employers will certainly pay attention to when weighing up candidates.

A strong CV will be clearly laid out; it will be concise, and it will highlight the skills which are especially relevant to the job that you are applying for. Think of a CV as a snapshot description of you - use it to tell your story. 

Boost your brand

Make your story more interesting by trying out different personal projects in your spare time - these can be writing blogs, podcasts or small businesses which show your endeavour and willingness to grow. A strong CV is one of the best ways to boost your career prospects.

Not sure what direction to take for your brand? Try taking our quiz to explore what might best suit your interests and personality! We’ll then suggest extracurricular activities for boosting your brand (and your CV) in that area.



How can you make your brand more visible?

Secondly, use social media as a powerful tool to demonstrate why you stand out as a candidate. LinkedIn is the main social media platform where professionals network with each other and post about their experiences.

A lot of employers and recruiters are active on LinkedIn, and so it’s a good way to draw attention to yourself. Think about posting on your feed about technology, news and current affairs related to your career.

Make sure to also announce any personal projects or achievements, whether academic or professional. However, make sure that you talk to a trusted adult before setting yourself up on any form of social media.

3. Seek Real-Life Experience 

Seeking real-life experience shows initiative, as well as excellent time-management skills. A lot of people may struggle to balance their studies with part-time jobs or volunteering opportunities, but like any skill, it will get easier the more you work at it.

If you’re able to manage your time effectively, it’s definitely an achievement worth talking about. Gaining real-life work experience for your CV is important to impress recruiters and provide potential talking points about your professional growth.

What kind of experience should you look for?

It can be hard to find that first opportunity without prior experience, but at its core, real-life experience can be whatever you want it to be.

It can be almost any part-time job to build up some income; it can be some work experience with local businesses, or it can even be volunteering at local charities. Some students start out knocking on doors, asking neighbours if they need their grass cut or cars washed. The key to gaining real-life experience is just to get your name out there and learn!

Your first work experiences don’t have to be a perfect fit either. There are always transferable skills you can draw from and apply to any future applications. 

Even if you ended up not enjoying a job, the valuable thing is knowing why you didn’t enjoy it, how you approached it professionally and perhaps what you learned about yourself along the way.

How can you go looking for experience?

Don’t be shy to just print off your CV and hand it to local shops, businesses and charities. Ask to talk to managers and tell them that you’re looking for a job or looking to gain some work experience. Otherwise, just leave a copy with a staff member and ask that they pass it on for you.

Don’t be put off by rejection. Starting out with little experience, it’ll always be a numbers game where you need to keep applying until someone gives you a chance. It could be worth talking to friends and family, as well as the school careers team, to see if anyone has any connections that they can put you in touch with. 

There are also sites like Springpod.com that offer virtual work experience and training recommended by UCAS for boosting your CV and university applications.

Get involved with extracurricular activities at school if you haven’t already. Not only will it help you to meet new like-minded people, but it will also give you something interesting to talk about to employers. If something you’re really passionate about doesn't have a club to join, you could try starting one! You’ll automatically have a responsible role in organising it, and you can use social media to arrange local or online events.

Getting out there and gaining all of this experience will help you to stand out - not everyone can say they made the same effort, especially when focusing on studies.

4. Start Networking

Networking is the process of building professional relationships, so it plays a big role in shaping your career. In the social media age, it’s never been easier or more important!

It’s best to connect with people working in jobs that interest you, or with peers with whom you share common interests. The goal of networking is to build a small community of people who all work together to support each other’s career development.

Networking can take place in informal settings, such as cafes and coffee shops, or in more professional settings, such as purpose-made networking events. 

How can you start networking?

Think about networking through LinkedIn, either with people you first met on the platform, or by ‘connecting’ with people that you met at school careers fairs, open days or events held by employers that interest you.

Think of your network as a plant that you need to keep watering. Keep checking in on your network, every few weeks, to have chats and engage with them to keep the professional relationship going. It won’t reflect well on you if you take their advice and then don’t keep in contact, for example.

It may also be useful to seek mentorship if you build a good relationship wth someone in a career that you want to pursue. They usually offer support and advice using what they have learned as you look to build a career in that area.

In addition, mentorship can provide some experience to go on your CV to show you’ve taken proactive action to learn more about your chosen career. You can find mentors at networking events - make it known that you’re a keen candidate who is willing to develop, and you’ll be surprised at how willing people are to help!

5. Be Curious About Your Career

At the start of the blog, I encouraged you to think about your strengths and weaknesses. Continue to ask yourself questions such as:

• What am I good at? What do I want to be good at?
• What are my weaknesses? Where might this become a problem?
• What are my interests, motivations and values?

Asking yourself these questions will help you understand yourself more and identify potential pathways to explore. In turn, they may help you rethink your potential career or rediscover the personal brand you want to embody. Websites, such as prospects.ac.uk are also useful for this purpose, as they have pre-built resources to help you start to think about careers that match you. 

Being curious about your career is all about asking the right questions - you want to show your own knowledge while displaying an eagerness to learn more. This type of drive for curiosity is highly valued by employers, as it shows them that you care a lot about your professional growth. 

How can you show your curiosity?

One great way to share your voice and display your curiosity is to start a personal blog or journal where you talk about topics around your favourite subjects. You could also document personal projects, make videos, review products, and give your opinions on theories and discoveries, both new and old. 

Making a social media or Tumblr page is the easiest way to do this, but you can also create your own personal website with some beginner-friendly tools like Wix.com that would link straight to your CV for all the background information on your passions, if you can’t fit them all on there.

In Conclusion

To summarise, boosting your career prospects isn’t only about being strong academically - employers will consider whether you’re a proactive individual who has taken steps to stand out. By implementing these five activities into your routine, you can lay the building blocks for a successful career that nobody can ignore. 

I want to stress the importance of making small steps of progress every day. Don’t be discouraged if you’re not an overnight success - every day of hard work and effort will contribute towards the bigger picture. Be consistent and you’ll be amazed at the progress you make over the next few years. You have nothing but time on your side.

Your dream job is there for the taking, but what will you do to get there?