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. 

To get started, look at our Making career choices page.

There have always been options to work from home, eg roles such as online tutoring. Many employers are now being more flexible with how they offer traditional desk-based jobs. For example, there are increasing 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 listed on Finding part-time jobs.

If you’re based in the UK on a Tier 4 visa, you will need to check whether you would be classed as an employee, or self-employed, before applying for any role. Tier 4 students 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, and the advice from Which?.

During lockdown, some employers developed virtual internships to replace their office-based opportunities. Rate My Placement, for example, specifically lists paid virtual internships, and have clearly marked internships which involve paying a placement fee.

You can 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 in areas such as law, business, finance, tech, marketing, consultancy, design and engineering. These are online programs built and endorsed by leading companies, such as KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and Unilever. They contain a series of resources and tasks designed to simulate the real-world experience of starting a career, and take around 5-6 hours to complete. You can write about their virtual experience programmes on your CV as achievements, and on LinkedIn as certificates, but Forage advises not to include them in your main work experience section. For more information about describing your experience, view Forage's Referencing Policy.

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 allows you to contribute your spare time to a good cause, while building up experience and skills in a variety of areas from home.

Go Volunteer is part of Newcastle University Students' Union (NUSU) and aims to help Newcastle University students find volunteering opportunities. They run virtual volunteering programmes, and 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.

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

Our START UP offer is open to all Newcastle University students and graduates of up to 3 years. It provides one-to-one coaching, training, events, peer-support, equity-free funding and more to anyone in pursuit of a self-employed career or new business, whatever stage they are at. Find out more about START UP. 

If you’re based in the UK on a Tier 4 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.

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 links 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 – develop your career, learn a new skill, or pursue your hobbies with 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. Receive a free digital badge for passing online assessments, which you can share on your LinkedIn profile. 
• 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. 
• Google Digital Garage – courses in digital marketing, communications and data. 
• Digital Business Academy – learn digital business skills from Tech Nation
• Codecademy – free basic coding lessons
• Udacity – free courses in programming, data science and artificial intelligence. 
• 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.

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

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 pick up tips on making yourself more employable, get insider information on specific organisations or find out more about the jobs market in general.

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

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, for example, 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.

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

To get started, try NCL Spark. Our mentoring platform connects you to alumni working in industry. Use it to find out more about career areas that interest you, directly from graduates working in those areas. You can ask a quick question about their career journey, or build a longer-term mentoring partnership.

Another great option is the Newcastle University LinkedIn Alumni page. We offer advice on how you can search for people who have studied your degree, and 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 and find relevant accounts on our sector-specific Twitter Lists. 

Joining a professional body, which represents people working in particular sectors, 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. 

More information about this is available on our Making contacts and Researching employers pages.

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, and access support for recruitment tests, assessment centres and interview preparation.

We can also provide interview coaching sessions, where 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.