Work experience is very important, and I was fortunate enough to get a work experience placement here at QCS Staffing.
I’m a fifteen-year-old, year eleven student, and I aspire to work in business, particularly marketing. The Covid-19 pandemic unfortunately prevented me from doing work experience at QCS Staffing last year. But thankfully I was lucky enough to be offered to do work experience here over my half-term.
Why is work experience important and how can it help you in the future?
Work experience is a crucial part of being able to understand the work environment, specifically in the certain areas of your desired career. It is a very vital practice that 91% of employers look for and prefer their candidates to have; and 65% of these prefer for this work experience to be relevant.
Work experience is proven to be extremely useful in your future, such as in higher education and your career. It can benefit you in many ways such as developing new skills, networking and finding the right career for you. Furthermore, research has suggested that work experience can significantly develop and enhance a young person’s employability skills.
Why I chose QCS Staffing:
I am so grateful to everyone at QCS Staffing for giving me such an amazing opportunity – it has allowed me to understand working life in an exciting office environment. I also appreciate how QCS Staffing was able to specialise my work experience toward marketing. At QCS Staffing, I was able to learn a lot through the opportunity to ask questions and develop a true understanding of everyone’s jobs and experiences.
What I have learnt at QCS Staffing- HR:
As a part of my work experience, I was able to meet and job shadow Becky Fretwell from HR. The HR department deals with multiple aspects of the business from employee relations to policies and regulations. The HR department links very closely with other functions of the business, such as Learning and Development for training, as well as the marketing department focusing on the ethics and the way in which the business is viewed. The HR department also runs Health and Wellbeing programmes, showing just how much QCS Staffing cares about their employees.
However, the most interesting thing I found out was about the equality in QCS Staffing. For example, when speaking with her it was clear how QCS Staffing values gender equality, for example maintaining a 54% male and 46% female split. This is further proved through the outstanding number of women in senior positions in comparison to other similar businesses in such male dominated industries.
What I have learnt at QCS Staffing– Business Unit Support:
By job shadowing Holly Biggerstaff, I learnt how much Business Unit Support does for QCS Staffing by viewing ‘a day in the life of business support’. They take care of all the admin, from emails, calls and greeting visitors, to arranging business trips for the Sales Team. They also keep the office well stocked by ordering all the supplies such as stationary and coffee. Holly's role includes formatting CVs for the Delivery Executives and Recruitment Consultants as well as completing reports for the Directors.
What I have learnt at QCS Staffing– Marketing:
I have been able to learn endless amounts about the ins and outs of the day in the lives of QCS Staffing's marketing team. I have learnt the different sides of marketing from design to the analytical perspective. For example, I was fortunate enough to be shown the companies google analytics, and so I was able to understand just how important marketing is in recruitment. Here they can evaluate the interaction between candidates and employees. I was also shown the PPC and how QCS Staffing creates display ads using Google Adwords and then analyses these (also through Google Analytics) to evaluate an ads effectiveness. Another part of marketing I learned about was about stock checklists – counting merchandise and seeing if any needs to be ordered.
As the main part of my work experience, I was able to learn many different things. For example, I have been able to create my own LinkedIn account, with help of Charlotte and Faye, where I have connected with many people. Also, arguably one of the biggest aspects of a recruitment company and another main part of my work experience was learning to write QCS Staffing job adverts with Hannah. I learnt all of the main aspects such as making it engaging but professional and informative. And, through lots of time spent shadowing Faye and Hannah, they taught me how to create effective blog posts, I learnt all the key points that need to be included such as logos, colours, statistics, and links.
All these skills I know I will be able to utilise in my education and future career.
A huge thankyou to everyone at QCS Staffing, especially the Directors, and the Learning and Development team, as well as Emma Fowler, Becky Fretwell, Charlotte Attwood, Hannah McMurray, and Faye Flower for making this all possible. I am extremely grateful for this amazing opportunity, and I know that all these skills I’ve learnt, I will be able to utilise in my education and future career.
