What types of work experience placements are there?
There are so many different variations of work experience and often no definitive agreement on what some of the terms actually refer to, so it’s understandable that students can get confused about exactly what they’re getting into. The great thing is that whether you’re looking for a year in industry or simply an insight week you can find a type of experience to suit you. Here, we’ve looked at four different options to give you an idea of what benefits they’ll bring you.
PLACEMENT YEARS
- Also Known As: Work Placements, Industrial Placements, Sandwich Year, Year in Industry, Year in Commerce
What are they?
Structured programmes where you spend up to an entire academic year working for a company as a full-time employee. For a “thick” placement this is in one 12 month block, or for a “thin” placement, it’s in two six month placements.
What are the benefits?
Firstly, as a full-time employee you get a full-time salary, these are often in the region of £15,000, although some recruiters pay more. Additionally, with a placement you get real responsibility, which means you have a chance to put into practice all of the knowledge you’ve been getting at university. It also means your placement is a great chance for you to try out a career and see whether you really like it before committing to it. Ultimately, as recruiters use placements as a way of assessing future candidates you may find that if you do well you could be offered a full-time job and sponsorship through the rest of your degree.
How do you get them?
Your careers service will have details of which companies are offering placement years as well as details of vacancies. Your university department will also be able to give you details of placements they know of and suggest ways of finding your own. Of course you can also search RateMyPlacement for hundreds of different placements offered by a range of the leading recruiters.
SUMMER INTERNSHIPS
- Also known as: work experience schemes, vacation schemes, internships.
What are they?
Internships are formal and structured programmes offered by many different companies as a way of recruiting students, introducing them to their company and benefiting from their skills. Typically, they last from 1 to 2 weeks or 6 to 8 weeks and involve the student working for the company on a defined project.
What are the benefits?
You get real responsibility doing a real job within a company and as the internships are designed to fit in with university summer holidays it means you get great experience, exposure to a company and a career without having to fit it around lectures. Nearly three-quarters of internships are paid, many at rates which are far better than the standard summer holiday casual work rates. As with work placements you also get a chance to impress the recruiter, possibly enough to get a permanent job offer.
How do you get them?
University careers services often have a list of companies who offer internships, as well as vacancies that you can apply for. Many companies also advertise internship opportunities on their websites or with recruitment sites such as RateMyPlacement — we have internship opportunities with many leading companies. It’s important to note that many of the larger companies that take on interns recruit between September and December, so you don’t have long to get your application in.
UNPAID WORK EXPERIENCE
- Also Known As: Casual Work Experience
What is it?
A very generalised view of casual work experience is that it involves a short period (usually a week or two weeks) where you go into a local company and learn about them and the different roles that are on offer and undertake some low-level responsibilities.
What are the benefits?
Depending on how well organised it is you’ll get a chance to show a company what you can do and learn more about how that organisation functions. It’s unlikely to be paid, although sometimes expenses are covered. Although it won’t be as strategically useful as an internship or a placement, anything that builds your experience and your exposure to working styles and careers can be useful.
How do you get it?
Often casual work experience is organised by schools, careers advisers or through personal contacts. Because it is seen as a way of introducing people to work it is often targeted at younger students and seen as a way of introducing someone into the world of work.
OTHER TYPES OF EXPERIENCE
What are they?
Insight Weeks, temporary work, university societies, volunteering, work shadowing.
What are the benefits?
All types of experience and work will give you something for your CV – a chance to show an employer that you are capable of taking on responsibility. All roles will also give you evidence of transferable skills – whether it’s communication skills from organising your Skiing Society’s Christmas ball, or developing finance skills from working on a cashier’s till.
How do you get them?
Often your university careers service will be able to direct you towards different opportunities. The first thing is to establish what sort of experience you have time for – whether you can offer a charity one day a month to help them out, or you schedule an Insight Week (an extended form of work shadowing where you get a glimpse into a day-in-the-life of a company or profession). The next step is to approach your careers service and work out where you can go next. If you’re looking for suitable temporary work then your students’ union will often have a job board or agency that can help find student-friendly jobs.
VIDEO: Why Consider Doing An Internship?
Here is another video provided by our friends at HereComesTheBoss, this time interviewing Fiona Sandford, Director of the Careers Service at LSE. She has some interesting comments and views on internships although I might argue against her line that your degree is more important than relevant work experience. For me, the two go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, in today’s increasingly competitive environment, a first class degree and no work experience is unlikely to secure you a graduate job…
