Information for employers
Discover how your business could benefit from hiring a placement student
Could your business benefit from the latest industry knowledge and ideas? Would you like your staff to develop supervisory and mentoring skills?
Hiring one of our students on a work placement allows you to benefit from the knowledge they gain at university and can help you develop the skills of your existing staff. Our students bring new ideas, energy and enthusiasm backed by the latest skills and knowledge from their course. They're keen to put their learning into practice and prove themselves ready for work.
You’ll help them develop their employment prospects and introduce them to a potential career. You might find a future employee, reducing your recruitment costs while demonstrating your company’s commitment to nurturing talent.
The students we've taken on have all had real drive to impress and exceed expectations. They're fast learners and have a thirst to push themselves. We've found them to all be real assets to the business.
Benefits of employing a placement student
Whether you’re a public, private or third sector organisation, a large multinational company or a small or medium enterprise, our ambitious placement students can bring your organisation many benefits.
Benefits include:
- Helping to drive forward a project that your team might not have the resources to work on
- Providing a cost-effective method of overcoming temporary staff shortages, particularly during busy periods
- Showing themselves to be good prospects for future employment, giving you the opportunity of an extended trial period and potentially lower recruitment costs after they graduate
- Providing access to specialists at the University with extensive industrial or organisational experience
- Sharing the latest research and industry trends through closer links with our Research and Innovation Services
- Injecting new, innovative ideas in an area where you’ve identified a skills gap
- Enabling your staff to use and develop managerial or mentoring skills
Placement length
A student work placement should be a full-time role for a minimum length of 36 weeks, excluding holiday.
Generally, students are available to do their placement from the beginning of June until the end of September the following year.
Cost of hiring a placement student
Placement students receive salaries at or above the minimum wage. The current average annual salary is £21,000
Job roles for placement students
When you partner with us, you can recruit placement students from across the University. We'll advertise your placement opportunities to students from varying subjects. And help you find the right student who's studying a related topic with suitable skills and knowledge.
Previous job roles
- Finance
- General business
- Human resources
- IT
- Legal
- Marketing
- Operations
- Supply chain
- 3D modeller and designer
- Film editor
- Interior design intern
- Marketing executive
- Photographer
- Production intern
- Charity fundraising assistant
- Data analyst
- Education assistant
- English language assistant
- Event management
- Fraud analyst internship
- HR assistant
- Management trainee
- Marketing, PR and social media assistant
- Recruitment assistant
- Research assistant
- Restorative justice administrator
- Translation assistant
- Victim support caseworker
- Youth worker
Sport science placement year job roles:
- Academy coach
- Camp leader
- Physical education teaching assistant
- Sports development officer
- Trainee physiotherapist
Computing placement year job roles:
- Junior developer
- IT analyst
- Management trainee
- ICT support technician
- Business analyst
Maths and physics placement year job roles:
- Flight physics intern
- Counter-terrorism and security analyst
- Commercial management intern
- Student research analyst
Mechanical and design engineering placement year job roles:
- Design engineer
- Quality inspector
- Project manager
- Junior aerospace engineer
- Engineering intern (hydromechanical)
Energy and electrical engineering placement year job roles:
- Systems engineer
- Electrical engineer
- Electronic design student
- Commercial estimator
Civil engineering and surveying placement year job roles:
- Building controls intern
- Construction management trainee
- Trainee building surveyor
- Trainee civil engineer
- Assistant quantity surveyor
We’re on our fourth placement student so far, and they've all been absolutely brilliant. It's critical that they are here and if they weren't, we would have to employ someone in that role - that's why we come back to you year on year on year.
Recruit a placement student
Our placement teams provide support and advice throughout the recruitment process to make it simple and efficient to recruit a placement student.
The placement teams can help with the following services:
- Drafting your vacancy adverts
- Advertising your vacancies
- Arranging student presentations
- Organising your attendance at events at the University so you can promote your business directly to students
- Collecting applications from students
- Arranging interviews on University premises
- Liaising with students after the interviews have taken place to let them know the outcome
- Providing students with your feedback
Our placement teams will promote your vacancy to our students, but you determine the selection criteria and interview format.
Contact our placement teams
See below for the contact details of our placement teams. If you're not sure which placement team to contact, we'll direct you to the right team.
Business and Law placements
Creative and Cultural Industries placements
Humanities and Social Sciences placements
Science and Health placements
Technology placements
Other ways to work with our students
Recruit our graduates
Our graduates have the skills, knowledge and confidence to succeed in industry, and we can help you recruit them.
Advertise part-time or seasonal jobs
Many of our students work part-time alongside their degrees, where they can put their learning into practice.
