How do student placements work?

Are you worried about gaining work experience? When you finish university how will you stand out when applying for Graduate roles? I knew how competitive the Graduate market was. This was something I considered in my second year that drove me to apply for a student placement.

I spent my third year on a student placement. I highly recommend a year in Industry. Everyone should consider it! It is your chance to gain some fantastic working experience while you complete your degree.

I spent last year working for Virgin Media. This has been an amazing experience and has given me more opportunities than I could have ever imagined. Day-to-day I have been responsible for coaching off-shore partners in India and the Philippines and taking a communication lead on high scale projects. I have wrote nominations for national awards as well as internal communications to share key-information.

Now I am coming to the end of my student placement I have begun to reflect on the year and really appreciate the fantastic opportunity I have had. I have built knowledge, developed skills and grown into a more confident person. In the second year I was hesitant on whether a placement year was for me. I thought adding another year of study to my degree was delaying my completion of my course. Having now had the experience I can tell you that it is 110% worth it!

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Brian Matthews provides his expert opinion on how important it is to get a work placement

Graduating with a good degree is, of course, the main priority for all students when they first walk through the doors of their Business School. Yet, graduating with work experience in the bag is even more important as recently mentioned by Steve Lowy on this blog, and students should maybe refocus their aims slightly to ensure they achieve exactly this.

We all know that interviews are all about experience, these days a degree is just a prerequisite.

So, this post is about getting you a job, about making sure you feel as ready as possible for that first interview, and about helping you to wash away those pre-interview nerves.

Our most important tip is to remember that an interview is just an opportunity to tell someone how awesome you are…

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Steve Lowy, Co-Founder and Director of Umi Digital

Are you a current or prospective student thinking about increasing your employment opportunities? There are a couple of great avenues to do so and I would like to share these with you based on my experience over the last decade or so…

My name is Steve Lowy, and I am a graduate of Salford Business School. I graduated with a 2:1 in Hospitality & Tourism Management in 2003 and had a wonderful time living and studying in Greater Manchester. After University, I travelled around the world with a backpack and on returning from a year away working and travelling, I embarked on my career. I started by running a 500 bed backpackers hostel in Central London and went on to launch my own Hotel – umi Hotels in 2007.

How did I manage to get here? What improved my employment opportunities?

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