Archive for Placements

All students should gain internships

28 February 2012 Rachel Career, Placements No comments
A degree

Is a degree enough? (Image via Wikipedia)

A government report says that all students should gain a minimum of 12 weeks work experience while studying for a degree (read more here). As internships, voluntary and compulsory, are a common theme on my blog I could not ignore this article.

I am passionate about increasing people’s employability, and as a student I am well placed to understand the opportunities and challenges that we face trying to obtain a career. As students we choose to make an investment in university, this does not just include the significant and rising tuition fees, but also the cost of living for 3/4 years, and the loss of a potential wage in an alternative job. We make this investment in the hope that it will be advantageous to us in the future and help us to get a great job. However with the huge number of unemployed graduates something is simply not working. Undoubtedly the current financial situation is a huge contributor to these numbers, but another common reason is that graduates are not suitable for the workplace, whether they are unable to do the basics, or do not have the global knowledge required.

The idea of including internships within a degree enables students to gain the skills that are required for their graduate jobs, it also has the advantage of letting them experience their career and decide if it is what they wish to pursue, and allows them to gain a certain type of maturity which is only learned through real work. I talk from personal experience for all of those points.

In my degree we are actively encouraged to gain work experience from our first day on the course! We also benefit from a brilliant placement service which offers us short and long term opportunities, but I was interested to see what it was like at other universities. I spoke to an Engineering student from  University of Warwick, an English and History student at University of York and an employed graduate of the TV Production degree at Bournemouth University. Each of them had a different experience of internships at university, from compulsory placements required at Bournemouth University, to encouraged internships at University of Warwick but very little help in gaining such opportunities. In conclusion it appears that universities do encourage students gaining experience, however the support they provide can vary considerably.

I can see a strong argument for making placements a part of degree courses, and I have previously written about compulsory placements, how can you claim to be qualified if you have never experienced the job you want to do? I also believe that the strongest students will already have obtained placements without being pushed by their university, and currently a full CV can separate the weak from the strong. I would recommend you read the comments on my compulsory placements post as they contain lots of interesting opinions from students on this subject.

The report also considers the financial implications on students from poorer backgrounds, concluding that universities ought to use their (Office for fair access, the universities access watchdog) fund to support those who may struggle to afford long internships. With the current financial situation and universities being required to cut spending and tighten their budgets, is it practical and fair to put this additional strain on universities?

Overall I would say that there is no right or wrong answer, but if internships became a requirement of degree courses I would not consider it to be a bad thing. In fact it can only be beneficial to employers and future graduates, however whether it is a practical solution, or now, is another question.

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Five considerations before working for free

23 February 2012 Rachel Career, Placements, Student Life No comments
Bookstand with large textbook
This article features a popular theme in my blog, that on unpaid placements and work experience. Rather than ask whether or not it is ethical or moral, today I ask you as a student or graduate looking to gain valuable experience to consider important factors before you accept working for free.
1) Would someone else pay me to do this job?
If you were offered an identical position at a similar organisation tomorrow would they be likely to offer you a salary? By accepting an unpaid position are you undervaluing your skills and allowing employers to exploit you and take advantage?
2) Can you afford to work for free?
The demands of work experience can result in significant costs, from travelling to food and even accommodation, not to mention lost salary from alternative work. If you cannot practically afford to carry out your work experience you may need to ask your employer to offer a financial incentive, if only to cover travel expenses. If they are not willing, do they value you enough to offer you a good placement?
3) Is the organisation in a position to pay you?
Some organisations simply do not have the human resource budget to offer you a salary, perhaps you are working for a small charity or new company. Maybe you are doing a favour for a friend who simply is unable to offer you financial remuneration. However if they can afford to pay you, ask yourself, why aren’t they?
4) Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
Through your placement are you gaining skills that you simply could not gain elsewhere? Are you receiving valuable training that could further your career? Are you building up a portfolio to wow future employers? You need to ensure that any potential sacrifices you are making to complete the placement will be worth it in the long term.
5) Will you enjoy the placement?
Most importantly, if you are working for free, you need to enjoy the placement. You need to learn, develop your skills and have a great experience.
Some organisations are seen to take advantage of students and graduates who are willing to take unpaid placements, but the majority of opportunities will allow you to apply theoretical knowledge and build skills that will be invaluable to you in the long term. And if that dream placement turns out not to be what you were expecting? Consider an alternative placement.
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Education through placement hunting

7 February 2012 Rachel Career, Education, Placements, Public Relations One comment
Comfortable Seating, Learning Resource Centre,...

(Photo credit: jisc_infonet)

My second new year’s resolution involved obtaining some great placements. Much of the emphasis of my course is based upon being able to demonstrate practical ability within a PR/Communications environment and the best way to do this is through placements. I have written numerous times about the importance of experience and placements, I have even written about ways of applying. What I have not yet written about is the educational benefits acquired from the search and application process.

Job hunting is a very exciting yet daunting activity. It takes physical and emotional energy, requires skills such as being able to sell yourself as well as a dose of good fortune. There can be heartbreak, you may lose out on the placement you wanted the most and there can be celebration when you grab the role that suits you the best. Overall it is a period of time when you learn an awful lot.

I was once in conversation with apprentice candidates, fresh out of school, full of energy and optimism. Asking them about their greatest learning experience a surprising number of them mentioned the during job-seeking they had learnt the most. At a young age we often have a naive impression of the job market, assuming that there will be the job that we desire waiting for us, but as we grow older and more experienced this vision is shattered as we come to face the reality of the world. It is tough to get the job you want. Perhaps I should not have been surprised by the number who identified job-seeking as educational, from my own experience it was a time in my life where I learnt a lot about business, about my ambitions and my personality.

I am continuing to learn, and through the last few months hunting for various placements have been particularly educational. I have been able to develop my skills in being recruited, learning about selling myself, my experience, personality and knowledge to an employer. Allowing the employer to see where I would fit into their organisation and how I would solve their problems and requirements. I have faced rejections and difficult questions but overall I have learnt so much and this has increased my confidence and ability.

Placement hunting has also taught me about what career I want to pursue. When I undertook a degree in PR I opened up the door to a huge industry encompassing many areas of business. Looking at the roles available to a candidate on my course I was able to identify what areas of PR I enjoy and at which I excel. While this has been a long term process, placement hunting made it easier to identify.

One of the greatest things about life is the lessons we can learn when we do not expect them. I have no doubt that my experience placement hunting will be beneficial to me when I graduate and need to pursue that precious graduate job. Looking at life as an education is also beneficial for the less successful endeavors, sometimes the best method can be to learn from your failures.

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Should placements be compulsory?

2 February 2012 Rachel Career, Education, Placements, Public Relations 16 comments
Work Experience

It is not a secret that experience is key to boosting employability. In a society where degrees are increasingly common, relevant experience now is not a bonus but rather a necessity for job seeking graduates.

Having met with PR students studying at rival institutions I became interested in the idea of compulsory placements. My degree course encourages us to seek placements from our first year, however other courses take it a step further and require students to complete a designated minimum time of industrial experience to pass the each level. Some courses require a 42 week placement year to be able to gain the degree. Fail to get a year placement, fail to get a degree!

When graduate jobs are competitive and many low level jobs require a years previous experience, by ensuring graduates have a good number of placements on their CV means they increase their likelihood of finding a great job.

Compulsory placements also support the movement of PR towards becoming a profession, a popular movement in some PR circles. Many professions, such as teaching and nursing, involve placements during training. Even dismissing the PR profession debate, can a graduate really be ready for an industry if they have never experienced it first hand?

On the other hand it would be hard to find a PR academic who does not encourage gaining work experience. Even while it may not be deemed compulsory most institutions will direct students towards gaining placements while studying. University is not about spoonfeeding students, it is a place for independent learning and research, supported by classroom theory. Motivated students will actively seek placements without being forced into doing so, these are the students who will graduate with the strongest degrees.

Another issue that could arise from compulsory work experience is the issue of unpaid placements. While I have previously supported such schemes, they do have a time and place. I do not feel easy with the idea of a PR student undertaking a year’s unpaid internship because otherwise they will fail their course.

I would be interested to hear your opinion on compulsory work experience. Good or bad?

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Should I be paid for my time?

17 January 2012 Rachel Career, Opinion, Placements 4 comments

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I recently wrote about the story of Cait Reilly looking at the affordability of a personalised welfare state. In the comments section Ruairidh Pritchard brought up an alternative view of the story and I would recommend reading Ruairidh’s article  on the story.

An important thing that he highlighted is that if you strip the story to its bare bones, removing any “middle-class job-snobbery”, the real issue is the ethics of having people work for free. Working for free is an accepted part of many students and graduates lives however it is a topic which has been under scrutiny recently.

I have personally worked free for a range of reasons from charity and voluntary work, work trials but most relevant to my blog is my unpaid PR experience. Many of my classmates have also taken on unpaid roles within PR agencies and departments in order to build up our CVs and portfolios as well as helping us to develop our skills and experience.

Is it right that we are not paid? I personally believe that an unpaid placement alongside studying is completely acceptable. It is important to remember that money is not the only compensation for your time. Gaining key skills, work experience and a good reference can be far more valuable, particularly for a student. I believe one of the best places to learn about a job is by working in that industry and role. I have a huge appreciation for academic education but for it to be effective it does need to supplemented with practical experience.

If organisations are demanded to pay for their placement students or interns the threat is that they will not be able to afford to take them on and as such it will be the students who are disadvantaged.

Having said this, there is a line. If by taking on a placement a student is not being compensated adequately, for example they become the tea maker and office photocopier, and are not given the opportunity to gain the skills they require over a significant period with the organisation, then I think they have crossed the line. Another issue is organisations asking students to work for 12 month or long but indefinite periods unpaid then again this is unfair.

It is an interesting subject and in many cases open to interpretation. I absolutely believe that unpaid placements have been invaluable to my education and career however I also understand the argument for legislation demanding payment for working.

I would be very interested to hear your views on the topic. Should we pay people for their time? Or is the experience adequate compensation?

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My New Year Resolutions

1 January 2012 Rachel Career, Education, Interests, Just For Fun, Placements, Public Relations, Ultimate Frisbee 4 comments

Welcome to 2012! If we believe the Mayans then we may witness the end of the world, or otherwise we may just live another of many years to come. Either way if 2011 is anything to go by this could be another dramatic, heartbreaking, interesting, amazing, educational year.

2011 was a brilliant year; I learnt a lot, met fascinating people and have experienced amazing things.

I’ve chosen three new year resolutions to share with you to ensure 2012 is an absolutely brilliant year.

  1. Read more books. I love reading a lot, from books, to newspapers, magazines and even the back of a cereal packet. There is rarely a moment where I am not reading, however I am reading a lot less books these days which I feel is a shame. So my first resolution is to read a lot more from books. I love crime thrillers and satirical fiction so if anyone can recommend great books in these genres it would be great. Also I’d love to read more industry related books so if anyone has recommendations I would also appreciate that and might even review them on this blog.
  2. Obtain some great placements. I am currently looking for short term PR placements and a placement year opportunity beginning from this summer. It is a little bit daunting but more than anything it is extremely exciting. This year I want to get some great placements particularly looking at Healthcare, B2B and Internal Communications. Hopefully I will be able to bring you news about some great placements on this blog.
  3. Improve my Ultimate Frisbee skills. I have made no secret of my involvement in my university’s Ultimate Frisbee team and my house is testament to this with numerous discs and trails of mud leading to well used boots. However the reality is I’m shamefully bad at playing the game. Up to now I have used multiple excuses from being too busy to an old ankle fracture but I now have physio treatment and my list of excuses is disappearing quickly. 2012 is my Frisbee year! Through a combination of nutrition, fitness and determination I hope that by the end of this year I will no longer be embarrassed to admit I am not a beginner at the sport. I also hope to play in Leeds varsity and show those Uni boys that they no longer dominate the sport!

Undoubtedly I will continue to update my blog with the developments of my resolutions. I would also be really interested in hearing from my readers what their resolutions are. Are you doing something crazy like jumping out a plane? Or is this year going to be the year you take up running? I would love to know.

 

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My consultancy experience

7 December 2011 Rachel Career, Placements 3 comments

During the summer I was fortunate to secure a short term placement with Eden PR in Nottingham. They offer a consultancy style service mainly catering to mostly Midland based clients from a range of industries including insurance, law and retail.

Working in a consultancy with the experience of Eden PR seemed an ideal opportunity to learn about the industry and develop the skills I had learnt during the first year of my degree.

The placement involved a dose of reality with long hours and hard work giving an insight into the life of a PR professional, but with the consultancy’s staff arriving before my start time and often leaving after my hometime it was made obvious that PR is not an easy career. Yet I was not put off.

Eden PR offer a structured placement plan, so from my first day I was made aware of the tasks and projects I would be working on during my placement. The tasks included media monitoring and researching but possibly the most educational task was in drafting press releases. I had been taught at university to write right, tight and bright press releases, but I soon learnt that this approach is not always suitable for the client or publication that you are writing for. I had to put into practise my writing skills to produce flowery press releases suitable for glossy lifestyle magazines and friendly pieces for local newspapers.

It was fantastic to see how a PR consultancy works, something that you simply cannot learn in the classroom. The team at Eden PR were fantastic, they were welcoming and eager to teach despite the very busy environment and as a result half a year later my experience is still having a significant impact upon me.

One of the greatest things about Eden PR is that they offer a structured placement plan, this ensures that you get to see many different aspects of the consultancy and your relatively short time there is well spent. This year they also offer a paid summer internship programme which is a brilliant opportunity for anyone interested in PR and I hope they will continue this. I would definitely recommend the organisation to anyone looking to develop a PR career within the East Midlands.

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How to find a placement

17 October 2011 Rachel Communications, Education, Placements, Public Relations 2 comments
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One of the best ways to supplement your university education is to find a placement for some real world experience. I do not know one person who has regretted a placement, even if it turned out they learnt they were in the wrong industry.

Most placement opportunities are not advertised and it is up for students to seek them out. I have had two contradicting methods of finding placements recommended so I will look at the advantages and disadvantages of both of them. Do note that both methods have resulted in placements and both have been recommended by equally reliable sources.

Call then email

Calling an organisation will let you know immediately if it is worth sending your CV to them. You can email 100 CVs out to 100 companies who are not interested in placement students and you have wasted a large amount of time. However a quick call can confirm whether they have a suitable opportunity.

Calling can also get you speaking to the right person, when you apply for a placement there is no point contacting a staff member who has no say over work experience, you want to speak directly to the right person and you can find out who this is with a quick call.

On the other hand every organisation I have personally worked for tends to be very busy and they do not necessarily have the time to talk to cold callers. While they may be quite happy to discuss placement opportunities with you at certain times, at other times it may be inappropriate and you could find yourself cut off by the receptionist.

Email then call

Another method is to email out CVs and covering letters to local organisations you are interested in and then calling them after a period of time, such as a week, to see if they have any interest in you as a placement student.

This method allows companies to do things in their own times, they can decide if you are suitable looking at your CV before speaking to you. And if you do not hear back from them, you are able to call them knowing your CV will be on their system.

The disadvantage of this is that the majority of your applications will be ignored, they may fall into a junk folder or else be skimmed over and forgotten. It also involves you writing out a large number of covering letters, I believe it is very important to personalise each covering letter, so if you apply to 20 different organisations that’s a lot of covering letters with no guarantee they are even looking for someone.

I find both methods have distinct advantages and disadvantages and it probably depends upon the organisations preference which method will be most effective.
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Personal Update

27 May 2011 Rachel Career, Education, Placements, Public Relations One comment

The past week has been monumental for me. It started when I finished my first year studying Public Relations with Marketing at Leeds Met. Then on Wednesday I turned 21, although if anyone asks I will deny being any age other than 19!

The end of university means a very enviable three month holiday and I have some very exciting plans, however there is still a large amount of space left in my diary. I am hoping to be able to fill this up with work experience and as a result placement hunting has now become my fulltime job!

I have always believed in the importance of experience. The best education in the world can be completely undermined by one week of important work experience, after all the real world does not stick to a theory! In the current climate it seems all the more important with increasing graduates fighting for decreasing opportunities. I want to support my education through being able to practise the knowledge and skills learnt in the right environment.

The search for work experience started a while ago however I have not yet been offered an opportunity. This has not deterred me, I am determined to secure as much experience as I am able to and with my holidays I am able to dedicate a lot more time to my mission.

The internet has a wealth of advice for securing work experience placements, including this very useful article from Behind the Spin which I would recommend to all students. Some of the best advice I have received has come from friends who have searched, secured and benefited from work experience and the overwhelming message is be persistent.

Hopefully my efforts will pay off soon but I will be sure to keep you all updated on my experience search and any advice you can offer would be appreciated.

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Work Experience

16 August 2010 Rachel Career, Education, Placements 2 comments

Reading this article reminded me of a previous post I wrote about the value of experience. The article highlights both benefits and criticisms from the rise of low paid or even unpaid work experience. More than that, it hit a chord with me. Just today I handed in my notice to my current workplace with the intention of going to University. This is a scary enough even if it was not for the daily news reports of doom and gloom surrounding the future for this year’s university students.

It would be easy to read the depressing stories of my potential future and give up on my dream, but I am not that type of person. I accept that the next years may not be as cosy as they would be if I stayed in my current job. I also understand that staying in my current job would not suit me and I refuse to put limitations on my future.

One of the ways I intend on helping my future is to grab every single opportunity I possibly can to help me progress and gaining work experience will be part of this. If I could walk from university as a graduate straight into my dream job I would be delighted. The reality is to get to this position I need to work hard not only on my academic achievement but on my industry experience. It would be fantastic if I received payment for that, but again I accept that the current economic climate, and the recruitment of my replacement has only highlighted just how dire this is at the moment, makes it very possible that I will have to give my time for free.

Do companies benefit from free work experience? Of course they do. However what they can offer students and postgraduates looking to enter the industry is invaluable. Giving them experience in the field they are interested will not only help them identify if it really is the career for them but also helps them develop confidence that will only grow with hands on experience. Furthermore I know from selecting candidates for interview at my current place of work that employers value people with actual hands on experience. All the enthusiasm in the world can not replace the requirement for someone who has been there and actually done the work, not to devalue in any way the importance of enthusiasm. Finally there is so much to learn from being in a working environment, academic books can teach you all the theories in the world, but it is when we put them into practise that we learn the most.

Who knows what my future is going to hold. I hope there are challenges; equally I hope there are successes. One thing I know is that I am not afraid to get my hands dirty; I know I will work as hard as I can to achieve what I want.

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