But that plum appointment is not going to just magically drop into your lap with no effort on your part; however much you can talk the talk, you’ve still got to be able to walk the walk. And that starts while you’re still at school. Work experience doesn’t have to be the preserve of those with friends in high places. Nick Clegg may have breezed into an internship with a Finnish bank, thanks to his father’s ‘sharp elbows’, but for most of us, securing work experience is going to take time and no small amount of effort on our part. But look on it as a dry run for the actual business of finding a paid job; you’ve still got to persuade an employer that it will be worth their while taking you on, even for a short period of time. It may not turn out to be the kind of work that you think you’ll ever want to go into but the experience of behaving and operating in an adult world will be valuable whatever field you choose to enter.

If you’ve been living the student life for 2, 3 or more years it may come as a bit of a shock to wake up one morning and realise that it’s time to find a job. Tempting as it may be to switch the alarm clock off, turn over and go back to sleep until four o’ clock in the afternoon this will not win you friends or influence people.

Check out our 25 Tips for CV Success and when you’ve digested those and got yourself onto the short list of possible candidates, find out how to smash the opposition with our suggested ways in which you might ‘ace’ a job interview!