Joy Semugooma, BSc International Business
Delivered by the Careers, Employability and Entrepreneurship team, Career Lab is a menu of 800 opportunities for students to build skills, experience and connections. Find out more below about how Career Lab supports student progression and read student case studies about their experiences of the programme.
About Career Lab
The Career Lab programme delivers targeted, extra-curricular support to students as part of the Progression strand of our current Access and Participation Plan (APP). The activities in this strand aim to ensure all students are supported to progress on to highly skilled employment or further study.
Opportunities are open to all Sussex students, and prioritised for under-represented groups. There is a menu of opportunities for each year group, so students can benefit from tailored support as they progress through their course.
The Career Lab programme includes 550 funded work experience opportunities: on-campus research internships, student consultancy to business, in-region in-person internships and online internships with businesses outside the UK. There is also a range of taster opportunities, such as insight visits to employer sites, mentoring, digital skills training and more.
How you can help
We encourage you to read the case studies below, explore what Career Lab has to offer and signpost students to these opportunities. Students can discuss their options by asking a question online or making an appointment with a Careers Consultant.
As we continue developing our next APP, active involvement from staff is crucial in embedding existing and new initiatives throughout the University, to make a lasting impact on our Sussex community.
If you have any questions about Career Lab, please contact: careerlab@sussex.ac.uk.
Student experiences
Joy Semugooma took part in various elements of Career Lab as a BSc International Business student before going on to secure a graduate internship with 10,000 Black Interns. Joy said: “I have learnt a plethora of skills. I have developed my leadership skills (through the Frontrunner Inclusive Leadership Programme), as well as my problem solving and decision-making skills (through the startup internship, and the consultancy programme). The programmes have helped me move forwards by making me more aware of the different positions that are out there.”
Valerie Kporye shared her experiences of working with a boutique consultancy firm through the Student Consultancy Programme in 2023, when she was a final-year BA Philosophy and English student: “It is an added experience to my CV which I can speak confidently about in job interviews and was also a great way of networking with my peers and meeting people with similar passions.”
Students have also seen success through the Online Global Summer Internship Programme, which is run by Virtual Internships as part of Career Lab. You can read about Marlena Jagoda’s experience of working virtually with a Canadian company during her BSc in Marketing and Management.
Employer experiences
Career Lab attracts employers across different sectors, in the local region and further afield.
Alex Brining, Operations Manager at Citizens Advice Brighton and Hove, said of their positive experience: “We were so lucky to host an amazing intern from the University of Sussex last year. They were a capable person, who not only took on all the tasks we asked of them but also shared ideas for things we could do better, new things we could get involved in, and brought more to the role than we expected.”
Corinne Card, co-founder and director at Full Story Media, has commented: “[Adele] was constantly bursting with ideas and brought a fresh perspective which was incredibly valuable. We were astounded by her work ethic and we seemed to blend well as a team. [...] By the end it was a no-brainer that we would want to keep her on beyond the internship stage and, as a result, she is now a valued member of the team.”
Many other students have continued working with their internship host, including BSc Economics graduate and previous intern for Unmanned Life, Dominic Morris.
Employers often return year on year, developing longstanding partnerships with the Careers, Employability and Entrepreneurship team. John Baltay, Managing Director and founding partner of Fenrix, a boutique management consulting firm based in London, is one of those: “We have completed our third year running with the University of Sussex internship programme and it has been extremely positive overall. Students have been engaged and eager to learn. Our three University of Sussex interns have all been open and have said that they really liked working, learning about new industries and gaining new skills.”
You can also read interviews with Henry Martin and Roy Boiko, two students who completed internships with Fenrix, a consultancy company.