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Virtual Opportunities

You can work, gain experience, or build skills through online activities.

Develop your skills, knowledge and experience from home

Identify your strengths

Before looking at opportunities, it can be useful to consider what’s important to you. Identifying and exploring your preferences, values and skills can help you to plan what to do now and after your course.

Remote paid work

Many roles that were traditionally desk-based now offer the option to work remotely. For example, there are options to work remotely in administrative, IT, sales, or customer-service roles.

To find remote, paid, part-time work use key word searches such as "home based", "work from home" or "remote work" on jobsites.

If you’re based in the UK on a Student Route Visa, you will need to check whether you would be classed as an employee, or self-employed, before applying for any role. On a Student Route Visa you cannot be self-employed in the UK.

When searching for virtual roles, be aware that there are some instances of fraudulent or 'scam' jobs. To help avoid them, read our guide on how to identify fake or scam jobs.

Virtual internships

Use the following resources to find virtual internships:

Rate My Placement lists paid virtual internships. Internships which involve paying a placement fee are clearly marked.

Search for more opportunities by using 'virtual internships' as a keyword on internship sites listed on finding internships.

Forage is a free resource offering virtual internships. This includes internships in law, business, finance, tech, marketing, consultancy, design and engineering. Programmes are built and endorsed by leading companies, such as KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and Unilever.

They contain resources and tasks designed to simulate the real-world experience, and take around 5-6 hours to complete. You can write about the experience on your CV as achievements, and on LinkedIn as certificates. Forage advises not to include them in your main work experience section.

For more information about virtual internships, watch the SRS Recruitment and Employability Experts' guide to Everything you need to know about virtual internships (39:55).

Virtual volunteering

Contribute your spare time to a good cause, while building experience and skills from home.

Go Volunteer in NUSU run virtual volunteering programmes. They have links to over 200 charities and not-for-profit organisations within the local community.

See Virtual volunteering for more resources to search for opportunities.

START UP

You could consider starting up your own virtual venture, or working as an independent professional online.

If you're interested in self-employment or starting a business you could access our START UP service. Access one-to-one coaching, training, events, peer-support and funding. Find out more about START UP.

If you’re based in the UK on Student Route Visa, you are not able to work on a self-employed basis. However, START UP can still help you develop your ideas and work on your plans.

Free online courses

Online courses are a great way to learn new skills, try out new subject areas or develop the skills you already have.

There are thousands of free courses available to start right now, from short courses that only take a few hours, to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which typically last between 4 - 10 weeks.

Use the following websites to search for relevant courses:

  • Learn a language using free online resources from The Language Resource centre
  • The Skills Toolkit – popular free online courses to help you learn new skills. It includes transferable skills that apply to all sectors and more specialised skills
  • FutureLearn – flexible online courses from world-class universities and industry experts
  • edX – 2500+ Online Courses from 140 Institutions
  • Udemy: Free Resource Centre – free online courses in a range of subjects
  • OpenLearn – free courses from the Open University
  • Ivy League MOOCs – courses from Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale
  • Alison – free online courses in a range of subjects
  • Coursera – free courses for university students
  • Iversity – European platform with a wide range of topics, from architecture to biotechnology
  • Skillshare – creative courses including photography, illustration and design
  • LinkedIn Learning – offers a month’s free trial with courses in Excel and PowerPoint. Also offer personal development courses, including leadership, time management and public speaking

Digital skills courses:

If you want to develop your digital skills, find out about opportunities on these external websites:

Read target jobs' guide to advancing your career with online courses.

Online events

Our events pages list a wide range of online events to take part in, from the Careers Service, the University and all over the world.

You can get insider information on specific organisations. Find out about the job market and how to make successful applications.

You can also see events listed on websites such as Rate MyPlacement and TARGETjobs

Awards, competitions and project funding

Entering a competition can be a great way to boost your skill set, gain experience and add to your CV – even if you don’t win! Many involve virtual submissions, so competitions are often something you can work on from home.

Our ncl+ Award, is a great way for you to get recognition for any extracurricular activities you’re involved with this academic year.

Visit our Awards, Competitions and Project funding page for internal and external sources.

Build your online network

You can develop your occupational knowledge from home by following employers. You can also join groups to keep yourself up-to-date with opportunities and industry news.

Connect with graduates through the Newcastle University LinkedIn Alumni page. See our advice on how you can search for people who have studied your degree. Browse profiles to see what types of things they're doing now and how they got where they are. If you're not sure how to use LinkedIn, you can look at our advice, or watch some of our tutorials.

You could also make contacts through social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You could find relevant accounts on our sector-specific Twitter Lists.

Joining a professional body, which represents people working in particular sectors. This could help you access training and networking opportunities, as well as careers support. You may be able to join as a student member. You can find links to relevant professional bodies in Explore Occupations.

Online support from the Careers Service

We can support you through each step of the process when looking for virtual opportunities.

You can send us your CVs and applications for feedback. You can access support for recruitment tests, assessment centres and interview preparation.

We can also provide interview coaching sessions. You can practise questions and get feedback in preparation for an upcoming interview.

You can also keep up-to-date with our latest news on our social media @nclcareers.