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Placements, internships and vacation work

Placements and Internships

Many courses enable you to do a year's work placement. These provide excellent opportunities to gain high-level experience, an insight into a particular job role and make useful contacts. The experience looks good on your CV and a large number of students get graduate jobs with their placement employer.

If you are in the Business School, the Faculty of Technology or the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries please contact your Placement Office to find out how they can help.

Purple Door Recruitment can help you find career-related work experience, mostly on an unpaid basis. To find out more and complete our online registration form, visit the Purple Door Recruitment section.

You can find your own placement and internship opportunities by exploring our work experience Knowledge Bank on Diigo. We have also created  to help you find 'hidden' opportunities.

Useful jobsites for placements and internships include:

• TARGET Jobs – Lists a number of placements and internships and articles on job hunting
• Work Placement Centre – 6–12 month placements and summer internships
• Graduate Prospects – this website has links to many organisations offering placements.
• The Year in Industry – 12-month placements with a wide-range of employers.
• The STEP Programme – Summer and graduate internships with small and medium sized organisations.
• Graduate Talent Pool – Paid and unpaid internship job board

Whilst recruitment agencies are unlikely to have vacancies advertised as placements or internships, they may have short-term contract work that could be suitable. The Agency Central website helps you find relevant jobsites and recruitment agencies. You can also find further information on where to look for opportunities in our guide to vacancy sources.

Vacation work

Thinking of returning to the same summer job this year? This is useful in terms of security and money but it could be a missed opportunity. Through vacation work you can often gain high-level experience that may directly relate to your job goals. Some large organisations advertise Vacation Schemes, sometimes called internships, which are aimed at second year undergraduates, some of these opportunities are advertised on our online vacancy database. These formal internships are not the only vacation opportunities available. Using creative job search techniques may help you identify opportunities that haven't been advertised.

We have put together a Knowledge Bank to provide you with virtual careers resource with information on work experience opportunities including vacation schemes, internships and placements.

The following video provides further tips and advice on placements and internships

With thanks to CareerPlayer, Graduate Jobs and Career Advice on video