This report will be identifying 3 possible opportunities for work experience in business, and
describing how work experience can prepare and support people in gaining an
understanding of work opportunities in business.
Opportunity 1:
For my work experience, I want to work as a customer assistant within a supermarket. After
researching which supermarkets have job vacancies near me, I have decided that Tesco
would be ideal as it is nearby and is also the biggest supermarket brand within the UK. I
want to work in Tesco because they offer a great work-life balance through the shifts that
they offer, and they offer many benefits to their employees, such as up to 22 days holiday
plus Bank holidays, and colleague discounts, including 10% off most purchases at Tesco.
Tesco is a British multinational and general merchandise retailer, with 336,392 employees
and over 3400 stores throughout the UK (Statista, 2022). Tesco operates through stores in
various sizes and online, offering a range of food, drinks, household appliances, electrical
goods and clothes, with a net worth of $30.49 billion (Macrotrends, 2022). Tesco are the
,market leaders in the UK supermarket market, with 26.4% of all grocery market spend over
12 weeks in 2019, being at Tesco, with their main competitors Sainsbury’s and Asda having
14.3% and 13.4% market share (Statista, 2019).
The job vacancy I have chosen for my 40 hours of work experience, is a paid part-time role
which is located in my local Tesco. The responsibilities for this job role include serving
customers on checkouts and ensuring they have a easy and personalised shopping
experience, delivering department
routines, manually condensing
stock and handling products with
care to maintain product quality,
working on reducing food waste,
following company policies and
following health and safety
regulations, being knowledgeable
about the products and services
sold in Tesco stores and using this
knowledge to help customers by
giving great natural customer
services, restocking products
within the stock and accepting
deliveries into the store.
There are many work-related
benefits involved with doing this job role within Tesco. Firstly, Tesco give all their employees
online learning platforms, which gives their employees the opportunity to learn new skills and
knowledge to help them be the best at their job role, as this improves performance, career
progression and learning as colleagues having access to learning modules means that
employees can develop themselves personally and build confidence in existing and future
roles at their own pace, with the resources provided by Tesco. This is important for my work
experience because I will be able to use online learning to help me develop and learn new
skills as I start my work experience, and this could help me get a full-time job within Tesco in
the future as I will be trained on what I need to do in order to be successful and will be aware
of what responsibilities are expected of me.
Working in Tesco will help me develop my communication skills, as I will get experience in
building rapport with customers and making sure they have experienced a great shopping
trip as part of my work experience. Meeting and talking to different people everyday will also
give me good customer service skills, which is an essential skill to learn because it is
transferable to many job roles, if I am doing a job that involves talking to customers in the
future, I will need to have customer service skills to help customers, give them a enjoyable
shopping experience and make sure they get all the products that they came into the store
for. Tesco will help me make sure my customer service skills are to a high standard through
the training they offer their employees. I will also develop good time management skills
doing this job role, as I will be given a range of tasks to complete within a given amount of
time, and I need to be able to make sure all tasks are completed efficiently within the time
given as part of this job. Therefore, this work experience will help me develop my time
management skills by learning how to prioritise tasks, be more organised and learn how to
be more productive. This is a transferable skill as most jobs require time management skills,
so that deadlines are met and tasks are well scheduled, therefore it is important to learn this
,skill and this job role is suitable for me to develop these skills. Finally, this work experience
will help me understand which career path is best for me, as having 40 hours of work
experience as a customer assistant will help me understand if working in retail is ideal as a
future career choice, so I can do a job I enjoy in the future. This work experience will also
help me understand what is expected of a customer assistant, so that if I did do this job role
in the future, I would already know what is expected of me and what responsibilities I have.
This job role is realistic to me because, from my personal attributes self-audit I identified that
I currently have poor interpersonal and teamwork skills, however working at Tesco will be
able to help me develop these skills as I will be working with a team of colleagues to give
customers a good shopping experience. Working at Tesco will give me the opportunity to
work and help other colleagues which will help build trust at work and lead to me developing
good teamwork skills, as I will get to know the colleagues better and understand what they
are good at and need help with to work as a team more effectively. Working at Tesco will
also help to build confidence when it comes to communicating, as I will be talking to new
people everyday as part of the job role, as Tesco being the UK’s most popular supermarket
means that a lot of customers will come into the store each day. This will lead to improved
interpersonal skills as having confidence will help me get my point and opinions across when
working as part of a team. Working at Tesco will also help me develop my flexibility skills, as
I will develop the ability to handle change and adapt to new situations as part of my work
experience, as being a customer assistant within Tesco means that I will have to complete
many different tasks, from directing customers to the products they want, filling shelves with
stock, to supporting store deliveries. Therefore, working at Tesco will give me the skills I
need in order to prioritise tasks and adapt to constant change, which is a transferable skill as
some workplaces will require their employees to work in different roles each day. Therefore,
I believe that working at Tesco is a ideal work experience opportunity for me as this will help
to develop the skills that I lack, as well as developing the skills I already have, such as
willingness to learn, as I enjoy learning new skills and experiencing new opportunities, as
having work experience at Tesco will give me the opportunity to learn new skills and help
develop me for a future career.
Opportunity 2:
As I would like to work in retail in the future and have been recommended to work within
sales in my future job from the careers tests I have completed as preparation for my work
experience, an additional work opportunity I am considering for work experience is working
as a general sales assistant within Matalan. I have decided that Matalan would be an
excellent opportunity for work experience because this will give me the opportunity to learn
and develop the skills that I need in order to work in retail full-time once I am finished with
college. Matalan started back in 1985, and exists to provide outstanding quality while
offering great value to families, taking the time to evolve their business to family needs and
sell clothing and homeware at the lowest prices. 12 million UK families shop at Matalan each
year and it has 230 stores nationally, as well as 30 international franchise stores within
Europe and the Middle East, as well as a rapidly growing online channel (Matalan, 2019).
The job role I am considering applying for in order to do work experience is General Sales
Assistant, which is a part-time paid role in my local Matalan store. Working in Matalan also
offers benefits, such as a 20% staff discount and access to a forum which allows employees
to share views and ideas.
,As a general sales assistant in Matalan, I will be responsible for guiding and advising
customers on products, making sure the store is well presented and tidy, making sure
customers have a great shopping experience so they want to come back again, working as a
team to achieve store targets and assisting with store deliveries.
There are many work-related benefits involved with this job role and new skills I will learn
and develop by doing this work experience. One of the main skills I will learn from doing this
work experience is patience and resilience, as I might have to work with customers that
require a lot more assistance and are slower paced than others, therefore doing work
experience as a general sales assistant at Matalan will benefit me as I am learning new skills
that I do not yet have, that I will need for a career in the future. Another skill that I will learn
from this work experience are selling skills, as I will need to be able to persuade customers
to buy products, without overstepping the line, as well as getting knowledge about the goods
and services the store sells in order to explain products clearly to customers and tell
customers why they should buy them. Doing work experience for this job role will also help
me develop my communication skills, which I already have to an extent but need training to
make these perfect. Having to communicate with new customers everyday, as well as other
employees to achieve goals and store targets will help to build my communication skills, as
being a general sales assistant will mean that I will have to experience situations like
greeting customers, handling customer complaints and communicating about a product
(eposnow, 2020). Furthermore, this work experience will improve my time management
skills, as there will be a lot of responsibilities involved which I will need to get completed in a
small amount of time, from making sales to assisting customers.
This work experience opportunity is realistic to me because it will really help to develop my
interpersonal skills, which I rated quite low in my personal attributes self-audit. This is
because getting work experience as a general sales assistant will give me opportunities to
work together as a team in order to give customers the best experience, and to achieve
goals, such as sales targets. It is important that I build these skills for a job in the future as
interpersonal skills are immensely important for communicating and working in groups, and
therefore if I need to work as part of a team in a future job then it is essential that I have
interpersonal skills to work well with others and understand them well. Another reason that I
believe this work experience would be realistic, as well as beneficial for me is because this
will give me the opportunity to gain the skills and knowledge I need in order to remain patient
and relaxed in stressful situations, like when I need to do a lot of tasks in a short amount of
time. Working in retail for my work experience will help me will help me develop my customer
service skills, which I also rated as needs improvement in the self-audit, as I have not had
the opportunity to gain customer service skills before, and therefore this work experience will
give me the opportunity to learn how to have good customer service skills, such as through
learning how to be persuasive and encourage customers to buy goods and services, using
positive language to stay optimistic and avoid anger when a customer has an issue, and
having clear communication skills to make sure customers understand me and that I can get
my point across.
Opportunity 3:
Additionally, another work experience opportunity is doing voluntary work within Oxfam. This
job opportunity would involve me working as a volunteer within a local Oxfam store. I would
, like to volunteer at Oxfam as they came first in Indeed’s “Best places to work in the Public
Sector & Non-Profits in the UK 2017”, doing work experience as a volunteer will also give me
opportunities and skills that I would not have the opportunity to do if I worked in a paid role.
Oxfam is a charity which is working to end poverty and provide a better quality of life for all,
through solving hunger, fighting climate change and providing health care and education to
those that need it most. Oxfam operates in 21 countries internationally in places such as
Italy, Canada, Australia and Belgium. There are around 650 Oxfam shops around the UK,
which are staffed by 23,000 volunteers. Their stores are used to sell second-hand clothing,
books and children’s toys in order to raise money to end poverty and help emergency
response and development work around the world (The Sun, 2018). Oxfam has had stores
in local communities since 1948 in order to raise funds and increase public awareness of
what their charity does to improve lives.
As a store volunteer my responsibilities would be to sort through the donated items and price
the stock for sale. I would also have to work on window and shop displays and make sure
the store is tidy and well organised for customers. I would have to have good customer
service skills as I will have to interact with customers and take payments, while accepting
new donations. This job role is an unpaid part-time role in a voluntary organisation.
Volunteering will bring a number of work-related benefits to me, as well as new opportunities
and skills to learn. Unlike paid work, the requirements for volunteering are likely to be more
linked with my passions and interests rather than extensive work experience, therefore this
can really help me get an idea of what career path I should take in the future. Volunteering
will firstly give me sales skills, as I will be helping customers buy goods and taking payment
from them. This is a transferable skill which is essential for many jobs, as many businesses
will require good sales skills in order to make as many sales as possible. Another skill I can
develop from volunteering is building my communication skills, as I will need to work with
customers and stakeholders in order to get donations for the Oxfam store, to then sell to
raise money for Oxfam to be a successful charity and achieve their goals, I will also need to
communicate to customers to assist them and take payments from them when they are
buying goods from the store. Another work-related benefit I will get from volunteering at
Oxfam is the ability to plan and prioritise work, through having good organising skills, as I will
need to do a lot of tasks for this job role, from working on shop displays to pricing products
for sale in order to raise money for the charity. In addition to this, volunteering will also help
me boost my CV and chances of getting a job in the future, as I will be able to put this
volunteering experience on my CV and get a reference from it like a paid job.
This work experience opportunity is realistic to me as volunteering will give me the
opportunity to develop new skills and improve my existing skills. One skill that I identified I
needed improvement on from my personal attributes self-audit, is my networking skills.
Volunteering would give me the biggest opportunity in order to get to know new people, as
Oxfam stores are located in busy town centres across the country so I can get to make new
friends and business partners in the local area and this will help me discover new people
within the community, which will improve the network of people that I know. Volunteering will
