Gain experience and valuable career insights

Find out how virtual programs provided by The Forage can help you learn more about potential career options.

If you’ve visited the Careers and Student Employment Service, you’ve heard us say that your degree alone isn’t enough for you to become employable. Companies also want you to have work experience or industry insight.

It doesn’t mean that you should wait until the end of your degree to find opportunities. Gaining work experience early helps you to:

  • learn more about yourself, your skills and values
  • acquire technical, practical or interpersonal skills
  • build your network and industry contacts, and
  • practice and improve your English language skills

When considering experience, opportunities related to your course of study or career interests are the most valuable for your post-uni career. Popular options to gain experience include:

Virtual learning experiences

There’s another way to gain insight into employment opportunities online. Virtual Learning Experiences are simulations or mini exercises from real companies. The exercises, which can range from two to eight hours to complete, simulate some aspects of work that the company does. While any student or graduate can complete a virtual learning experience, the earlier in your degree that you try these experiences out, the more informed you will be about your career options.

The Forage

There are several providers of free virtual learning experiences, but Macquarie University has a relationship with The Forage. They are a leading provider of virtual learning experiences from organisations such as Red Bull, PwC, Accenture, Deloitte, and dozens of others. The MQ Business School features a tailored Forage landing page with curated projects for students to explore. In addition, certain units in the Business School contain Forage modules as part of their curriculum.

Modules on The Forage website cover many degrees of study. After you complete one of them, you can:

  • compare your finished work to that of a company employee on the same task to see how well you did
  • receive a certificate of completion for your resume and LinkedIn profile, and
  • upload your resume onto Forage for an opportunity to interact with company recruiters.

In addition, feedback from a number of companies indicates that students who complete a virtual internship:

  • have a stronger understanding of that company and their work
  • perform better within recruitment processes, and
  • speak confidently within interviews where they can articulate their skills with examples from their virtual learning experience.

Virtual learning experiences are also a great way to prepare for PACE placements and graduate programs, and to gain a closer insight into the expectations of a professional workplace.