Work placements and internships: get in before you graduate

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A placement or internship is very different from general work experience. For a start, they happen in a specific timeframe. They are also usually project-focused and there is almost always some structured training.

A placement/internship can enhance your employability far more than general work experience and looks very convincing on a CV. This is because they are usually much more focused on specific job areas, and this will enable you to highlight what you have achieved on a specific project to other employers, who'll also assume that you'll have been trained in some work-specific skills.

These aren't the only benefits, however. Recent research has suggested that once you have been on a placement/internship, you stand a one-in-three chance of being offered a job by the company with whom you did the placement, and larger companies will often sponsor students they like through their final year.

Also, students returning from placements report that the experience has sharpened their study skills. According to experts, it will enable you to put what you learn into an industrial or business context in a way that you couldn't before, and you will usually pick up things like time-management skills and the ability to focus that you might not even notice you have.

When and where should I go?

Placements of a few weeks can be done in any holiday, while year-long placements/internships are almost always taken in the year preceding the final year of a degree. However, once you have been accepted on to a programme, universities and employers are usually flexible if for some reason you cannot start and need to defer - particularly if this is due to reasons out of your control.

All sizes of organisations offer placements/internships. There is a tendency for small- to medium-sized businesses to want people who already have some work experience, as the smaller the organisation the less time it has to train people in basic work skills such as writing professional e-mails.

On the other hand, students in small- and medium-sized businesses can quickly find themselves being given quite large amounts of responsibility as soon as they have proved themselves. The tendency in larger organisations is that they are less concerned with previous experience as they have the resources to train anyone in almost anything.

What employers look for

Employers are not particularly concerned with academic skills at this stage. Students don't tend to specialise until their final year, and far more important for employers is the aptitude and personality of the applicant - with enthusiasm, maturity (in attitude not age) and determination being particularly important.

In terms of interpersonal skills, you will need to demonstrate that you are a team player as you will be the junior, required to fit in with everyone else. Companies can be just as rigorous in their search for the right intern as they are with permanent employees.

Milliken is a textile and chemical company that offers placements of three, six and twelve months through its Summer Challenge Programme. 'We want people who have an academic understanding of modern methodologies in business and industry, but who are also able to facilitate projects and motivate people who have perhaps been in our industry for twenty years,' says Jeremy Graham, Human Resources Director at Milliken.

'We search very hard for the right people and the successful candidates might have been interviewed by half a dozen people at the company before they are taken on.

'The students are brought in to match the project so they need to be on the right course and have the right skills. Every participant receives the in-house training in the areas they need when they start, and they will often present to senior management at the end in order to demonstrate how successful their project has been.'

What's in it for employers?

Apart from having a general interest in making sure that the next generation of employees has the right skills, companies use placements in order to road-test people for permanent appointments.

'We see internships as a year-long interview,' says Jason Stoop, sales manager of golfbreaks.com. 'We want to take our interns on permanently. In fact, I was a placement student myself, and we find quite a lot of our permanent staff this way.

'The thing is we are a small, exciting company that has been growing very rapidly, and because our interns have exactly the same responsibilities as our permanent staff we know after a year that we can trust them and that they understand what we are all about.'

What are the chances of getting a job?

The Placement Office of the University of Brighton estimates that about 20% of its interns get offered permanent jobs when they graduate, and talentladder.com (a website that finds work experience and placements for students and recent graduates) has estimated that about 30% of its students get taken on. Milliken currently takes on about a third of its Summer Challenge participants and would like to increase this to a half.

What could I earn?

Although some placements and internships can pay as much as £23,000 for a year in industry, the average is around £14,000 per annum. There should be very few placements/internships that pay less than £10,000 per annum.

Is it just a form of cheap labour then?

It is undoubtedly true that some companies do view placement schemes as a cheap way of getting in touch with the latest academic thinking. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the student is cheap labour, as placements are so valuable to students themselves in beginning a career.

'The projects on Summer Challenge do have a payback,' accepts Jeremy Graham. 'The projects are real and in today's environment they are based around the idea of finding ways to reduce some of the company's costs.

'One student was so successful she managed to find a cost saving of potentially almost £100,000. But in return we do provide very good-quality training, and we want placement students who achieve to this level to go on and grow with the company when they graduate. We would like to get all our graduate employees this way.'