Job and project banks let you network with the business community
The demands of the business community are as varied as they are diverse. It makes good sense to practice working on realistic projects while you are still a student. Job- and project banks help you do just that.
“Assistant lecturer, needed for Institute for…”, “We would like for you to spend between 6-12 hours with us per week. We prefer applicants who are familiar with SQL/html/ JavaScript…”, “By doing volunteer work for us, you will gain experience with…”. The three examples above all originate from a university job bank. Companies and institutions express a number of demands to potential student workers or interns, but do not let that put you off. If a job advertisement grabs your attention, get in touch, says Careers Counsellor Rikke Bjerregaard Jespersen from the Career Centre at DTU: “Job and project banks function as the display window for both companies and educators,” she states. In the autumn of 2016, the intern- and project bank of DTU contained job advertisement from 36 companies and proposed projects and PhD. programmes from 300 lecturers. “Some student jobs and projects in our database are very specific, but you need to keep in mind, that companies and lecturers use this platform to attract relevant people,” the Careers Counsellor explains.
“Job- and project banks function as the display window for both companies and educators.”
Rikke Bjerregaard Jespersen, DTU Career Centre.
Job banks worth checking out
- AAU’s project, internship and job bank (including Copenhagen and Esbjerg).
- DTU’s internship and project bank (including the diploma programmes in Ballerup).
- ITU job and project bank (including a number of international jobs).
- RUC’s job bank (very diverse, primarily Zealand).
- AU’s job bank (including electronics and business in Herning).
- SDU’s job bank (run by the same portal as above, so a job agent will find the relevant posts).
- Prosa’s job and CV bank (nationwide it-trade union).
- Praktik.dk (most commonly internships or trainee positions without pay).
- Frivilligjob.dk.
- Akademikernes Jobbank.
This gives you a legitimate reason to contact the party in question if they have posted a project or job in the database of your university. Consider the hunt for a project, volunteer work or past time job as a relevant practice run in terms of contacting the appropriate people in preparation for an interview. You will enhance your job hunting skills while you gain an increasing insight into your own qualifications for the day when you find yourself with your diploma in your hand.
Job Instigators
It is commonly known that the mouth to mouth method often generates student jobs or internships. A student from another year may recommend you to inherit their student job or tip you on whom to contact in a particular company to keep you from mailing applications into the blue. It might also be a family member, whose uncle works with your cousin’s niece’s husband, who is an engineer and just happens to know that his company is looking for an intern – so yes, the road to a student job or internship may be random and intricate, and you need to be tuned in to react promptly to all sorts of enquiries.
If your own network or fellow students are unable to recommend student jobs or internships to you, you may find information by looking through the job banks at your university. Here you will be able search for various jobs across the country. Central engineering universities such as DTU, AAU, AU and SDU have job banks, but consider searching the job banks of KU (University of Copenhagen), ITU (IT University of Copenhagen) CBS (Copenhagen Business School) and RUC as well if you wish to work in Zealand. Some posts are partly hidden unless you open a profile via the relevant educational institution, but it allows you to double check whether there are jobs available that you were unaware of when you searched the job bank at your own university.
Experience is transferable
If you are interested in volunteer work, look for tasks that are related to your studies such as becoming a fair host at DSE, a volunteer with PF or another professional association – or do something completely unrelated such as coaching sports teams, riding a tricycle with nursing home residents who need some fresh air or collect donations to Syrian refugees through an NGO. Regardless of which type of volunteer work you do, you may see it as a means to gaining social skills such as practicing talking to all sorts of people, coordinating a task, implementing it and perhaps eventually evaluating it.
