Why is Work Experience valuable for young people?

Work Experience is vital to help young people gain practical experience that can help them progress professionally. We offer placements to help individuals gain a hands-on experience, specialist knowledge and assist them with developing skills and personal growth.

In 2022 we launched our Work Experience Programme to open opportunities young people looking to build their future careers. This project is led by our passionate recruitment team Jenny Tod (Recruitment Manager) and Liam Walding (Recruitment Coordinator) who previously onboarded 50 placements in 2022 and in 2023. We have increased this figure to an impressive 72 placements for 2024.

Our wide range of placements within both operations and client facing roles allow young people to explore different career options and provide them with insights into multiple roles and cultures. At Taylor Rose MW we offer placements for up to 10 days to help individuals develop confidence in their skills and knowledge as they learn on the job.

What experience do we offer and why do we feel it is valuable?

This year (2024) we received over 300 applicants and onboarded 72 young people to learn from our team in departments including:

• Residential Property                       
• Personal Injury                
• Finance
• Crime & Extradition                     
• Audit                                   
• Family & Children
• Clinical Negligence                           
• Operations   
• Remortgage 
• Recruitment
• Marketing
• Litigation
• HR

Each applicant attends an interview, to give them insight into what it would be like to ‘apply’ for a position. One of our placements, Sasha Cole says “The application process was really straight forward and enabled me to get some interview practice in – The Recruitment team are very friendly and supportive and also took the time to help me develop my CV.”

Depending on the placement, young people can be involved in tasks such as; legal research, drafting documents, understanding processes, shadowing teams and supporting projects related to their placement.

At Taylor Rose MW, we feel it is important to offer Work Experience for those looking to kick start their careers. Jenny Tod (Recruitment Manager), said “One of our strategies is to humanise law as well as identifying potential talent. Work Experience placements give young people an insight into working for a large corporate Law Firm and can help them develop skills and build confidence in working in a team environment.”

Hear from some of our Work Experience placements:

Salma Kauser recently joined us for a 5-day Work Experience placement in one of our operations positions, Remortgaging. Before her placement she said she hoped to get an insight into a 9-5 job, to experience the office environment, learn how to work as team and alongside different personalities. She also wanted to gain some experience and transferable skills that she could add to her CV plus learn more about Taylor Rose MW, our working style and the organisation.

During her placement, some of the key skills Salma developed included, gaining an understanding of specific terminology which also bettered her communication and listening skills. Salma said “Speaking to the team and asking for help has significantly helped with my understanding of remortgaging and computer skills. In particular, the software used by the team.”

We asked Salma about her week with us. She said “I loved it! They are a great team to work with and I have been able to get to know a lot about each of the team members. I know what they do on their day to day, but also about them as people – I have really felt like part of the team.”

Salma’s mentor, Racine Marshall (Remortgage Team Manager), offered to mentor a young person hoping it would help them gain ’valuable, transferable skills and tools’ that can be taken into the working world.  

Racine adds that offering Work Experience is valuable because “The working world can often feel daunting to young people who are fresh out of school or university. Work Experience provides them an opportunity to experience an office environment as they can be very different – Taylor Rose MW is quite relaxed and allows them to feel the ‘office vibe’ giving them an idea of what to expect.”

We also spoke to Sasha Cole, who joined our Marketing Department for 2 weeks.

She said marketing is something she is passionate about and would like to pursue, completing a Work Experience at Taylor Rose MW was insightful as she had never worked in an office setting before. She added “Work Experience has helped me develop an understanding of Marketing and the skills required - I’ve learnt a bit about everything that goes on within the Marketing team! It has been a challenging 2 weeks, as I faced tasks I hadn’t done before. I am a ‘do it and learn’ person, which is something I’ve been able to do with support from the team.” She commented that she was glad her placement was two-weeks as she felt had more to learn. Sasha’s mentor, Sophie Fryer (Marketing Executive) adds “Often the best way to learn is to be thrown in (with support from the people around you). As team, we set Sasha on some tasks which we knew she would likely be tasked with within a junior marketing role (including drafting this blog!). We wanted Sasha to leave feeling she had gained some valuable experience, knowledge and skills that an aspiring marketer can take forward into their future career.”

We have now filled all of our available Work Experience placements for 2024 and we will be reviewing the programme in Autumn. Keep an eye out for any updates which will be announced later in the year.

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