Work Experience Starts Long Before the Placement: Rethinking How We Prepare Young People for the World of Work

A student sits staring at a blank email.

They’ve found a local business they’d love to approach for work experience. They’ve researched the company. They’ve visited the website three times. They’ve even found the right contact person.

But they can’t quite bring themselves to press send.

“What if they say no?”

“What if I sound silly?”

“What if they don’t reply?”

For many young people, this moment never makes it into a work experience programme evaluation. It doesn’t appear in destination data. It’s not recorded in Gatsby Benchmark reporting.

Yet moments like this are often where the real work begins.

As careers leaders, advisers, and educators, we spend significant time thinking about placements. We build employer relationships, complete risk assessments, coordinate logistics, and ensure students have meaningful experiences once they arrive in the workplace.

But what if we’ve been looking at work experience through too narrow a lens? What if the most important part of work experience isn’t the week a student spends with an employer? What if it’s everything that happens before it?

The Hidden Reality Behind Every Placement

Every successful placement has a story behind it. A story that often starts with uncertainty. While some students appear confident and proactive, many are navigating an increasingly complex careers landscape. They are being asked to make decisions about industries they don’t fully understand. To explore roles that didn’t exist when their teachers were at school.

To prepare for workplaces being reshaped by technology, automation and artificial intelligence. To market themselves professionally before they’ve had the opportunity to build professional experience.

For some students, this feels exciting. For others, it feels overwhelming. And for many, the challenge isn’t a lack of aspiration. It’s knowing where to start.

Career leaders see this every day.

The student who wants to work in healthcare but doesn’t know the difference between the hundreds of roles available. The student fascinated by technology but convinced they’re “not clever enough.” The student who would thrive in a professional environment but lacks the confidence to contact an employer. The student who quietly gives up before they begin because everyone else seems to know what they’re doing.

The truth is that finding work experience is often a careers education experience in itself.

The Skills We Don’t Always Measure

When we talk about work experience, we naturally focus on what students learn during their placement.

• Teamwork.
• Communication.
• Professional behaviour.
• Time management.
• Problem solving.

These are all incredibly important. But there is another set of skills developing long before a student enters a workplace.

• Researching opportunities.
• Identifying organisations.
• Writing professional emails.
• Making phone calls.
• Following up appropriately.
• Handling rejection.
• Building resilience.
• Reflecting on personal interests.
• Connecting strengths to opportunities.
• Networking.

These skills matter because they don’t just help students secure a placement. They help students navigate their future careers.

After all, work experience may happen once or twice during a young person’s education. The ability to identify opportunities and pursue them confidently is something they will rely on for life.

When Confidence Becomes the Barrier

In conversations with students, confidence often emerges as the greatest obstacle.

Not talent. Not ambition. Not potential. But confidence.

Many students know what they would like to explore. They simply don’t know how to take the next step. For some, professional communication feels like a language nobody has taught them to speak.

They worry about getting things wrong. They worry about looking unprofessional. They worry about rejection. And perhaps most importantly, they worry about being judged.

These concerns may seem small to adults who have spent years in professional environments. But to a young person making their first contact with an employer, they can feel enormous.

This is particularly true for students who may not have access to professional networks at home. Some young people grow up surrounded by conversations about careers, workplaces and opportunities.

Others do not.

Work experience programmes have the power to bridge that gap. But only when we recognise that confidence-building is just as important as placement-finding.

The Growing Complexity of Career Decision-Making

Today’s students face a level of complexity that previous generations could hardly imagine.

The number of career pathways has expanded dramatically. New industries continue to emerge, traditional routes are evolving, information is available everywhere, advice comes from multiple sources, social media presents curated versions of success, and artificial intelligence is changing the way recruitment works.

Students are expected to make sense of all of this while still discovering who they are.

The issue isn’t complexity itself. Complexity is an inevitable part of life, and every young person will encounter it in different ways as they grow.

The real challenge is helping them navigate that complexity with confidence, curiosity, and resilience, rather than becoming overwhelmed by it.

This is where careers education is at its most powerful. Not because it provides all the answers, but because it gives young people the tools, perspective, and self-belief to ask better questions. Questions that help them understand who they are, what matters to them, and where they might want to go next.

Why Work Experience Should Be Seen as a Process, Not an Event

Too often, work experience is viewed as a destination.

• A placement is secured
• A week is completed
• A reflection form is submitted
• Programme complete

But meaningful work experience is a process.

A journey that begins long before a student arrives in the workplace and continues long after they leave. The preparation phase is where students begin developing self-awareness. They start considering their interests, exploring possibilities, researching sectors, understanding workplace expectations, developing communication skills and learning how to advocate for themselves.

Every interaction becomes part of their learning. Every email drafted. Every employer researched. Every conversation held. Every setback navigated.

The placement itself is simply one chapter in a much larger story.

The Opportunity for Technology to Support, Not Replace

This is where technology can play a transformative role.

Not because it replaces careers professionals, and not because it can ever substitute the power of meaningful human conversations. The future of careers education will always be built on relationships, trust, and the guidance of skilled practitioners. Technology is valuable not because it makes decisions for young people, but because it helps them access support at the exact moment they need it.

The reality is that many students hesitate to ask questions. Sometimes they worry their question is too simple. Sometimes they are unsure who to turn to. And often, the moments that shape their thinking don’t happen during a scheduled careers appointment. They happen at 9pm on a Sunday evening, when they’re worrying about their future, exploring university options, considering apprenticeships, or questioning whether they are good enough to pursue a particular path.

Those moments matter.

Technology has the potential to bridge the gap between curiosity and action. It can provide reassurance when uncertainty feels overwhelming. It can offer guidance when direction is needed. It can help students prepare for important decisions, encourage them to explore possibilities they may never have considered, and gradually build the confidence that so many young people need.

Most importantly, technology can create opportunities for students to engage with careers learning on their own terms. It can empower them to become active participants in shaping their futures, transforming careers education from something that happens to them into something they genuinely own.

And when we achieve that, we are not simply helping young people make better career decisions. We are helping them develop the confidence, agency, and belief that they can navigate an increasingly complex world and create a future that is meaningful to them.

How CiCi Supports the Work Experience Journey

At CiCi, we’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about work experience. But not just the placement itself. We’ve spent time thinking about the moments nobody sees.

The moments before the application is submitted. Before the email is sent. Before the phone call is made. Before a student ever steps through the door of an employer. Because while work experience is often measured by where a student goes, its real impact often begins much earlier.

As careers leaders, you see this every day. More often, the challenge is helping a young person believe they are capable of taking the first step.

You see the hesitation that doesn’t always show itself in obvious ways. The student who keeps putting off sending the email. The student who quietly assumes they’re not good enough. The student who has convinced themselves that opportunities are for other people; people who are more confident, more connected, more certain about their future.

And perhaps that’s one of the greatest challenges facing young people today. Not a lack of opportunity. A lack of certainty that opportunity belongs to them. In a world full of possibilities, many young people are carrying around questions they rarely say out loud.

• What if I get rejected?
• What if I say the wrong thing?
• What if I don’t know enough?
• What if everyone else has a plan and I don’t?

These aren’t small concerns. They are often the very things that stop action from happening in the first place.

Every careers leader in this room has spent countless hours helping students move through those moments. Encouraging them. Challenging them. Helping them see strengths in themselves that they struggle to recognise. And that work matters enormously.

Because careers education has never simply been about destinations. It has always been about belief. 

It’s about helping a young person move from “I can’t” to “I might.” From “I might” to “I’ll try.” And eventually from “I’ll try” to “I can.”

That journey is often invisible, but it may be the most important journey of all. This is where we believe technology can play a meaningful role.

Not by replacing careers professionals. Not by replacing guidance. And certainly not by replacing the relationships that sit at the heart of great careers education.

The reality is that young people don’t only need support between 9 and 5. Their questions don’t conveniently arrive during a careers appointment.

Sometimes uncertainty appears at 9 o’clock on a Sunday evening. Sometimes confidence disappears the night before an application deadline. Sometimes a student needs reassurance in the exact moment they are deciding whether to give up or keep going.

Technology can help bridge those gaps.

It can provide support in the moments between conversations. It can encourage exploration, answer questions, help students prepare, and build confidence before they walk into a careers office, a classroom, an interview or a workplace.

In many ways, it allows careers education to be present even when careers leaders cannot physically be there. And that matters because the demand placed on careers professionals has never been greater.

You are balancing increasing expectations, evolving labour markets, employer engagement, destination outcomes, Gatsby Benchmarks, CDI Frameworks and the needs of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of young people.

No single conversation, programme or intervention can reach every student at every moment they need support. But together, we can create more opportunities for those moments of support to happen.

At CiCi, students use the platform to explore career pathways, understand industries, prepare questions, draft professional communications and reflect on their strengths. Sometimes the questions are practical.

How do I approach an employer? What should I include in my email? How do I follow up if nobody replies?

But often the questions are far more personal.

Am I good enough for this? What if I get rejected? What if I don’t know what I want to do yet?

And perhaps those are the questions that matter most.

Because every unanswered doubt has the potential to become a missed opportunity. Every fear left unchallenged can become a reason not to act.

When we help students work through those barriers, we are not simply preparing them for work experience. We are helping them develop confidence, resilience and independence, qualities that will serve them throughout their lives.

Which brings us to an important question.

How do we define success?

For many years, success in work experience has understandably been measured by placements secured and employers engaged.

But perhaps success is also found in smaller moments. The student who sends the email they were previously afraid to write. The student who researches an industry independently for the first time. The student who learns how to present themselves professionally. The student who experiences rejection and discovers they can recover from it. The student who begins to recognise strengths within themselves they never knew they had.

Because those are the moments that endure. Long after the placement ends. Long after the reflection form is completed. Long after they leave school or college.

As careers leaders, you are already doing extraordinary work. Every day, you help young people navigate a world that is changing faster than ever before. You help them make sense of complexity. You open doors. You create opportunities. And often, you provide belief before students have learned how to provide it for themselves.

Work experience remains one of the most powerful tools we have. But perhaps its greatest value is not found in the placement itself. Perhaps its greatest value lies in the confidence built beforehand. The courage required to reach out. The resilience developed along the way. The self-belief that grows with every small step forward.

Because work experience doesn’t begin when a student walks through the door of an employer. It begins the moment they start believing they belong there. And that’s a journey none of us should underestimate.

It’s also a journey worth supporting, together, every step of the way.