Find out how providing online work experience can benefit your organisation and early careers outreach strategy.
With more and more of our everyday working lives taking place online and remote work now normalised in many sectors, virtual work experience has grown immensely in popularity in a relatively short time.
Virtual work experience is simply work experience that takes place online. It might include digital training materials (such as written, audio, or video content), live sessions such as Zoom calls or webinars, activities and tasks, virtual tours, and more.
Here at Youth Employment UK, we can help you to create work experience opportunities that will appeal to young people and help you to bring the best youth talent into your organisation. Read on to learn about a few of the key benefits of virtual work experience.
Access to a wider talent pool
In the digital age, it is no longer necessary for jobseekers or employers to be restricted by geographical constraints. This gives you access to a much wider talent pool.
When you offer in-person work experience only, you limit your candidates to those within the same town, city, or region. But by offering virtual work experience, you can tap into talent from anywhere across the UK. This diversity can lead to fresh perspectives, innovative solutions, and a more diverse candidate pool.
Offering virtual work experience also allows you to bring more work experience students in overall. Since you are not constrained by physical space limitations, you may be able to give opportunities to far more young people than in a traditional in-person work experience setting.
Boost your reputation as a good youth employer
Young people have high expectations from the organisations they work for, and they expect those employers to keep up with the times. By offering quality virtual work experience, you can show that you are a forward-thinking and innovative organisation that has adapted to the changing world.
A good work experience offering also allows young people to get to know your organisation more deeply. It allows you to showcase all the best things about working for you, cementing your reputation as a youth-friendly employer and a great place to work.
Make your work experience offering more cost-effective
Virtual work experience no longer needs to be a poor substitute for an in-person offering. Thanks to modern technology, it can be just as immersive, educational, and informative as its in-person counterpart.
Virtual work experience is often far more cost-effective to offer. Since you can reuse the same training materials multiple times and offer asynchronous working (e.g. activities that participants can complete in their own time), it uses less staff time and fewer resources for an equally beneficial outcome.
Enable a more diverse range of candidates to participate
In-person work experience is not accessible to everyone. Aside from the geographical constraints, young people may struggle to access it for a variety of reasons ranging from health issues and disabilities to caring responsibilities, neurodivergence, or even a lack of funds to travel to your site.
Virtual work experience is far more accessible, as anyone who is able to access the internet and set aside a little time can participate. This means that you will immediately increase the diversity of your candidate pool, ultimately making it far stronger.
Make work experience more flexible
Offering in-person work experience is time and resource intensive for both the employer and the participants. It requires young people to be at your premises during particular times and also requires your staff to take time out of their regular duties to facilitate and supervise work experience activities.
Virtual work experience creates much more flexibility for everyone, allowing young people to participate around their other responsibilities and your staff to offer support and supervision alongside their regular work duties.
Cultivate a digital-first approach
As the world of work continues to move and stay online, many organisations are shifting to a digital-first approach in order to stay agile and relevant. This means that you will need to cultivate this mindset throughout your organisation and hire those who are comfortable and confident with this way of working.
Offering virtual work experience also allows you to assess how well prospective candidates work in a digital-first work environment. Are they able to self-motivate, prioritise and juggle tasks effectively, behave appropriately online, and communicate effectively through digital channels? All of these attributes are essential for success in many modern workplaces.
Ready to get started?
Here at Youth Employment UK, we can help you develop your virtual work experience offering. If you’re ready to reach talented young people across the UK, talk to us about developing your virtual work experience by emailing members@youthemployment.org.uk or completing the enquiry form.
