How my friend got vac work within a week and how you can do it too
My friend, lets call him "Frank" is a 3rd year mechanical engineering student and up until now he had not done his required vac work which is about 10 weeks of vac work in order to graduate next year. He needs to have done all his vac work by june/july next year. After finishing his November exams he contacted his student advisor to help him out with regards to this. He and his student advisor sat down and they looked at previous students who had done vac work in the faculty and which companies had provided vac work.
How Frank got Vac work:
1. Asked for help from his advisor
2. He got a list of companies that offer vac work for students in his field
3. He google searched all the companies to get their emails and phone numbers
4. He called each of the companies to find out if vac work opportunities were still available?
5. He emailed his academic transcript, CV and letter of motivation to those companies that said they still had vac work opportunities
6. He got a couple of offers from many applications and chose the one he felt was best in terms of location, pay and the type of company.
7. He signed a contract
You could just search online to find vac work but most companies here in SA don't keep their websites up to date and most will say that the deadline for vac work opportunities has already passed even though they would still take you or there are still vac work opportunities if you approach them directly. Companies like people who take initiative, whether its cold calling them or going to the company and walking in to inquire about vac work, that yields faster results than an online search. Some of the smaller companies do not advertise vac work online so many vac work opportunities are missed by those who just stick to online searches.
