How to Turn Uni Projects Into Work Experience (Even Without a Job)
10/24/2025
🎓 How to Turn Uni Projects Into Work Experience (Even Without a Job)
🤔 Think you don’t have “real” experience? Think again.
You might not have had your first graduate job yet, but you’ve already built skills that employers want. Every essay, group project, and society role has taught you something valuable — you just need to know how to frame it.
💡 What Counts as Experience?
“Experience” isn’t just full-time jobs. It’s anything that shows you’ve learned, contributed, or solved a problem:
- Coursework and dissertations
- Group projects and presentations
- Volunteering or charity events
- Student societies, clubs, or sports
- Freelance work or side projects
- Personal learning projects (like coding or blogging)
Example: Planned a student society event? That’s project management. Tutored someone? Communication and leadership.
🧠 The Power of Transferable Skills
Employers care less about where you learned a skill and more about how you’ve used it.
| Uni Experience | Transferable Skill | How to Phrase It |
|---|---|---|
| Group project | Teamwork & communication | “Collaborated with 4 peers to deliver a marketing campaign under tight deadlines.” |
| Dissertation | Research & analysis | “Conducted independent research and presented findings in a 10,000-word report.” |
| Student society | Leadership & organisation | “Led weekly meetings and organised events for 50+ members.” |
| Volunteering | Initiative & problem-solving | “Created a donation drive raising £1,000 for a local charity.” |
📎 Download: Transferable Skills Guide — Free PDF
✍️ How to Write About These on Your CV
Use a Relevant Experience or Key Projects section. Format:
Project name or role — University of [Name]
Month Year – Month Year
- [Action verb] + [what you did] + [result achieved]
Example: “Led a cross-functional team to produce a social media strategy for a start-up client, resulting in a 30% increase in engagement.”
🪞 Link Your Experience to the Job You Want
Read job descriptions, highlight the required skills, and map your projects to them.
Example: If the role values “data-driven decision-making,” link it to your research or dissertation analysis.
✅ Quick Exercise
List three: the project, what you did, and the skill it proves (teamwork, creativity, organisation, etc.).
🌟 Final Thoughts
You don’t need years of work experience to impress employers — you just need to show how your uni journey has prepared you to contribute and grow.
📎 Download your free Transferable Skills Guide to translate your projects into job-ready experience.