Year in industry scheme

[roseorange]

Who has experience of DC applying?
What do we say or ask for? Do they consider part-time placements?
Engineering of some sort is DC's interest pre-uni apps.

All knowledge would be appreciated.

When I was at Uni the Uni had links with appropriate organisations and helped set up placements . Friend of mine is a lecturer and this is part of his job for undergrad civil engineers.

Different courses have different placement schedules. Whole year (thick sandwich ), two shorter periods ( thin sand which). A podiatrist friend god her degree part time and did her undergrad clinical experience part time too.

Ah, just typed a reply, and then realised your looking at something pre uni?
I'd be tempted to go straight to uni, but on a course that has a sandwich year in the middle, and then the uni sort it out.
If your son has some training, he's actually be able to do some work more relevant to what he wants to end up doing rather the company having to do the basic training, which will then get repeated at Uni.

several companies offer these for engineering degrees - eg Shell, some companies offer fully funded degree courses alongside work experience (Jaguar Landrover), so may be worth looking at, most engineering degree courses have a sandwich year placement

This is part of the Headstart organisation who also arrange YINI.

Anyone else know about it?

The Environment Agency do a degree in Rivercand Coastal Engineering which is a year at Uni first, then work placement with block weeks at Uni. It's pretty well paid too, which is tax free. It used to be £11k, but I think it's gone up.

I did YII in the 90s!

Marking my place to write about it tomorrow.

IME (although my experience is very very old), YII offers full time industrial placements for roughly 1 year, and is done in the year between A-levels and university. The pay wasn't brilliant - many companies paid minimum wage (at the time around £6k gross), my gross salary was roughly 1.5 times minimum wage, but this was quite unusual. HOWEVER! I don't think I've ever been richer! Most students lived at home and were placed locally.

The work wasn't particularly interesting - I was a "lab rat" - so I basically performed and recorded lab experiments for a year (many variations on the same experiment ). I guess what the companies get are people who are reasonably intelligent, with an interest in the work/environment, whom they don't need to pay too much, and who will do the kind of grunt work that you probably wouldn't pay someone more qualified to do.

PROS

• I put aside about £2000 for university - I lived out for 6 months and lived at home for 6 months
• I did my YII in the north west region - there were a lot of students and we formed a good network of friends
• As part of YII, we did an external qualification, the NEBSM Certificate in Supervisory Management (3 residential weeks in Pershore Business School and 4 assignments, I think)
• My first proper "at work" experience - before this it had only been part time jobs

CONS

• The work was mind-numbingly dull at times
• I think I made a lot of "growing up" mistakes in that job - living in close quarters with several other students... did some silly things. But at least I didn't take them onto my graduate jobs!

Overall, I would probably recommend it based on my experience. It was good life experience.

My dd1 is currently doing this and it is proving to be an excellent experience for her. I agree with zhx3 that a lot of the work is fairly basic and repetitive, don't underestimate the value of the wider skills acquired. For example my dd has to prepare a weekly report from data obtained from a lot of different sources. The first week was new and interesting, the next few were 'boring because she'd done it before' but once she got used to the idea that people raised questions not to check her work but because the issues mattered - and gave her the chance to be involved in the investigation and resolution - it is now very interesting.

Based on her experience I would say pick your placement well. She went for large companies with a dedicated grad training dept because they were more likely to have a well thought out programme and would provide better experience.

She is doing this because she wasn't sure what she wanted to do at uni and this gives her the chance to find out more about her potential post uni options which could inform her decision. She is living away from home in a shared house and growing up - learning how to manage a budget and negotiate use of the washing machine etc. it has also been a massive confidence boost - she applied for 5 placements, had interviews for all 5 including a 2 day assessment centre for 1 of them. And she got offered 4 of them so I am very hopeful that she will have a headscart in the graduate market when she emerges from uni.

And the pay is a welcome bonus. She is getting £1,000 per month which is below the tax threshold so she gets almost all of that to spend, although I am encouraging her to save too.

So overall, 10 weeks in, I am very pleased with the scheme.

Thank you very much. Helpful.

How do we list work skills as required? A 17/18 yr old does not have many, do they ? What sort of things did you list?

Do you know whether it has to be full time are are there part -time placements?

You need to explore the relevant websites - Jaguar Land Rover here. this lists the qualities they require. need to apply to school/hobbies - ie teamwork is easy, efficient delivery ie meeting deadlines, can use projects at school, organising a trip all shows the qualities they are looking for

why doesn't your dc contact YINI and ask these questions themselves? My dd found them very helpful when she was filling in forms etc. I don't know about part time placements - but would think it depends on the reasons for wanting it. It's real work, not work shadowing, and I think your dc should approach in the light ie it's a proper commitment to a proper job that the employer needs doing. Having said that there is always scope for negotiation - my dd is not doing a full 12 months because of her other gap year plans. She was told this might reduce her range of placement opportunities but the one she wanted most was fine with it so I don't know how hard it might have been to negotiate elsewhere.