Placements/Internships - Your views?

Good morning all,

Wasn't too sure whether to post this here or in general university discussion.

Anyways, I was briefly reading this report yesterday and research suggests that:

• Almost all of the UK’s leading graduate employers are offering work experience
programmes for students and recent graduates during the 2010-2011 academic year – a total of 10,665 places are available.

• Three-fifths of employers are providing industrial placements for undergraduates
(typically for 6-12 months) or vacation work lasting more than three weeks.

• Nearly two-thirds of recruiters warn that graduates who have had no previous
work experience at all are unlikely to be successful during the selection process
and have little or no chance of receiving a job offer for their organisations’
graduate programmes.

• At least half the graduate vacancies advertised this year by City investment
banks and the leading law firms are likely to be filled by graduates who have
already completed work experience with the employer.

Source: http://www.highfliers.co.uk/download/GMReport11.pdf

So I was just wondering if any of you can relate to these statistics?
Have any of you been on a placement/internship and been offered a job straight after?

For those of you who have done a placement/internship, has this helped you to find a graduate job after or did you still have problems during the selection process?

For those of you who aren't planning on doing a placement/internship, whether that is through choice, or because your course doesn't allow you to do one, or because you haven't managed to secure one do you feel you're at a disadvantage?

And people's general views on placements and internships?

I promise, this is not for a dissertation of some sort haha :smile:

.

All opinions welcome :smile:

Reply 1

n65uk

Graduates are not getting anywhere these days because:

Some do not have any experience, at all. For example, they did what everyone else did and went School > College > Uni.

Others get rubbish grades and are lazy

Others do degrees in ridiculous areas

Degrees are too common these days, without experience or certain skills you'll have no chance at proving to an employer why YOU should have the job over the other 70 odd that applied for the same job. This article is a year old and still true: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/nearly-70-graduates-for-every-job-vacancy-2019168.html

Others do not apply for minimum wage jobs as they believe they are too good for them

We are interviewing for a new developer at my company, 15 people were interviewed out of 47 applicants. I sat in them all.

The person that got the job was not a graduate, the rest of them failed.

Graduate schemes help, and definitely do work. However, there are so many graduates these days what chance do you have of getting on one?

I'm not a graduate, and have had no problems getting a job.

Reply 2

Clip

I think one big problem is that gap years are almost always wasted pursuing nonsensical crap. Bumming around Thailand and Australia with other British students, and spending 6 days "helping" people.

Spending gap years in normal employment of any kind looks so much better.

Given the choice between two graduates - one who "went travelling" for a year, and another who did the early shift at McDonalds for a year - I would choose the latter every single time.

Reply 3

Smack

Volunteer Team

Internships/placements are an extremely good idea for both the employer and the student: the employer essentially gets an extended interview with the student, who is also cheaper labour than a professional, and the student gets a taster of the industry and the company, some valuable experience, and more money than they'd get working in Asda or somewhere.

It's hardly surprising that a lot of companies are extremely hesitant on recruiting applicants who have no experience. Employing new people is always a massive risk, but if the candidate has already proven themselves then it's not so risky any more.

It also makes sense for firms to put people who have interned for them straight onto the graduate programme as they will already be familiar with the company, its procedures, etc.

Placements/Internships - Your views?

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you