Francesca

Francesca landed a work experience placement at Oostor.com, a Cambridge business that provides an online store to help customers discover the best independent brands around the world.

"Working at Oostor.com during the summer gave me insight into how small businesses operate, and how to grow a business. It was an amazing experience seeing first-hand how animation can be used to help them grow a brand.”

Work experience offers many benefits, including enhancing your personal skills like teamwork and communication, while providing a taste of the workplace environment. Francesca told us: "The thing that I have enjoyed most is working with the people, and the atmosphere in the office. It is quite a noisy office and people are always chatting, which helps because the work can be quite stressful at times. We work well as a team and everyone is really friendly."

Undertaking work experience in their chosen field also provides a great opportunity for students to meet industry contacts: "For the role, I was interviewed by Partha the CEO, and Karina the Chief Marketing Officer. In the interview they asked me a lot about the things on my CV, and the other things that I could offer the company; if I was good at thinking of new ideas - especially for the website - and if I was willing to learn. I also took with me a sample of some written work that I had, which I think was helpful because they could see my written work was a good standard."

Francesca was able to learn new skills during her work experience that will look great on her CV: "I have learnt how to write SEO (search engine optimisation) documents and press releases, things that I had never done before. For example, we wrote press releases for a collection of products with a similar theme, so I recently wrote one for our urban jungle collection. I also helped with blogging as well as working on a series of animations that have been used to draw attention to particular product ranges."

Work experience can be a scary experience, but also a rewarding one. Francesca's advice for other students was: "Try not to be nervous, and be yourself."

Find out more about our BA (Hons) Illustration and Animation