Help choosing a work experience program for your gap year
What can I do?
There are four ways you can gain work experience on your gap year – voluntary work, structured work placements, unpaid work (internships) and paid work.
Voluntary work
Voluntary work is an excellent way to obtain work experience, which is one reason why it is such a popular activity for those taking a gap year so popular that we have given it a separate page.
View voluntary work organisations
Structured work placements
Many companies offer structured work placements but within Year Out Group the Year in Industry (YINI) stands alone. YINI provides high quality, paid placements for students in their gap year before or during their degree course.
There are placements for students interested in all areas of engineering, science, IT, e-commerce, business, marketing, finance and logistics. Students are placed with 300 top UK companies every year including Shell, Rolls Royce, British Energy, L’Oreal, Network Rail and AstraZeneca as well as many smaller organisations.
Subsequently about a quarter of all YINI students are sponsored through university each year and many of the companies see the Year in Industry as an important part of their graduate recruitment programme.
A placement arranged with YINI will earn you respect and give your CV an important competitive edge.
View structured work placement organisations
Unpaid Work/Internships
Many Year Out Group’s members that offer voluntary work have used their extensive contacts to set up internship programmes overseas. Types of internship include: conservation, international development, eco-tourism, marketing, medicine, journalism, law, media, entertainment and sport and are available in many countries. Placements can be for a few weeks to several months.
Internships can be a useful way of checking whether or not a preferred career is indeed the right one for you. If it is then the experience will give you a competitive edge. If not then it was s well to find out at this early stage.
View unpaid work / internship organisations
Paid Work
A few Year Out Group members offer paid work placements. Most of these work opportunities are for seasonal work and therefore not particularly well paid. But they do provide useful work experience, can be good fun and often offer opportunities to indulge in a particular sport or pastime such as skiing or surfing. As many of these jobs are in tourist resorts they are particularly attractive to those considering a career in the travel or tourist industries.
Where can I go?
Year Out Group’s members operate in over 90 gap year destinations around the world. When deciding where you would like to take your gap year you can obtain background information and up to date security information from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s (FCO’s) website. You gap year provider will provide you with a country pack but there is nothing better than a good guide book in order to learn more about the country, its history, people and customs. There will also be travel books about the country. Basically the more you know about a country before you go, the greater will be your enjoyment.
Which organisation?
There are now hundreds of gap year organisations based in the UK and overseas. Selecting the gap year organisation and the gap year program that is right for you requires careful research. It is for this reason that Year Out Group developed the 50+ questions in its “Planning a year out?” section. These can be used to help you check out any gap year organisation. It is even more important to use these questions should you decide to try and book direct not least because there is an increasing number of poor organisations and even scams seeking your custom.
Why Year Out Group?
Year Out Group is a membership organisation. Year Out Group only accepts gap year organisations that have been operating for at least three years and that meet the Group’s membership criteria. Members are then required to demonstrate annually that they continue to meet the meet the membership criteria.
Year Out Group’s members will have checked out all their gap year programs and will do their best to check that you are right for the program you have chosen and vice versa. They will provide you with information about your project and destination and brief you as appropriate. Once in country their representative will be available to support you should anything go wrong.
