Industrial Placements - How many manage to find one?

[Ellerby83]

Just wondering really how hard it is to secure a 3rd year placement. What proportion of students suceed. It seems more and more unis are offering placements so there must be large numbers applying for the smallish amounts of placements advertised.
DS is studying Comp Sci.

DD2’s degree also includes a year in industry and is currently applying. Her uni has a Placement Office but there’s no sessions on CV writing or interview techniques etc. I don’t know why they don’t have a couple of lectures / workshops. Seems sensible to have lots of them altogether and go through the processes. Instead, they say to contact them for help. DD did, but at the appointment they just gave her websites to search like Indeed etc, which she had already done.

@Ellerby83 there is an easy way to get the answer to your question. Create an account on Whatdotheyknow.com (you don't need to use your real name) and submit a freedom of information request to the relevant university along the lines of "For the past 5 years please tell me how many students on course X (include the course code) secured an industrial placement in their third year." They should reply within 20 working days with the answer. (If you check previous FOIs you might even find someone has asked the same question already!)

Applying for an industrial placement or internship is just like applying for any other job. Many companies that get hundreds+ of applicants are using AI for the first sift. It screens out applications with lots of spelling and grammar errors, and looks for key words and phrases that help to ensure minimum requirements are met.

DD has got a placement for next year. She's really pleased so I hope it goes well for her. University were pretty good in offering support to get a placement.

Dd is currently applying for placements. Everyone she knows who has got one, it has been through their personal contacts.

@1SillySossij So what happens if you don’t have the contacts? That’s almost impossible for some dc who are taking courses outside their family and friends expertise.

My ds still hasn't found one. Not many on his course CS have.

@Ellerby83 Im wondering if success at this depends greatly on course studied and numbers looking. I think many students would have problems getting a placement via family and friends - our DDs would not have done. It’s ok for dc of vets and doctors and DH would have done if DDs were doing civil engineering but CS and many other degrees, we would really struggle. I do applaud dc on here getting placements and the huge effort they have made. It’s quite a huge chunk of additional work I rather suspect they didn’t expect to have to do. I think universities should publish data in the course info about exactly what students must do to get a placement and how many are successful and how many are given placements by contacts.

The villains here are the universities that advertise courses with placement years without making it very clear they're dependent on students being able to find placements themselves (and including numbers of placements from previous years for context). Perhaps this needs some regulation.

To be fair to universities in the UK, most employers offering placements do not want anyone to choose the intern for them. French universities and GE are used to making contractual arrangements with employers for placements, whereby the decision on which student is placed where as an intern is not wholly up to the employer. When French universities (pre-Brexit...) approached UK employers for placements they were always perplexed to discover that the university wouldn't be sending interns and that the employer wanted to manage the recruitment process.

I've heard that CS at the entry level is saturated with too many graduates chasing fewer and fewer jobs. Lots of jobs being offshored. He would be best off applying to small start ups who are less likely to offshore.

Does anyone know whether placements have to fulfill specific criteria, e.g. be relevant to the course, or provide feedback in a certain format; or whether you can treat it as a gap year and apply for any job you want?

I think it depends on the course and the university. My DS1 is on a course with a thin sandwich scheme which means short (3-6 month) placements in years 2 and 3. His placement last year was straightforward due to family connections but he's struggling to find something for this year.
We've advised DS2 to not apply for courses (MEng) with placements and apply for summer internships instead. There seems to be a lot more summer placements about and a lot less angst if unsuccessful with applications

He has been applying to small companies as well as large ones. He still has quite a few applications out there still but having spoken to him last night he seemed quite down about it.

Forgot to add, there are still tuition fees to pay even when they are off on placement. DS1's fees this year are reduced to £1985

I can imagine, it must be very disheartening. The job market has changed drastically since the pandemic especially in tech related jobs. I know because DH was made redundant in 2023 (worked in banking IT) and it took months to find a new job. A few years back he would have had multiple offers within weeks.

IT jobs are being offshored to India and Eastern Europe on a huge scale.

Could he look at adjacent industries? You need to really go out of your way to find a contact who might be able to help him get a foot in the door. We got chatting to a neighbour who worked in IT who gave DH some leads in job hunting and he also met someone at our tennis club who was quite helpful.

I’ve heard anecdotally that comp sci is still one of the easier courses to get placements, but even so there are more students chasing places than places to go around. York comp sci department has contacts in industry which are specifically open to York students and around 1/3 of comp sci students looking for placements get them through that route. If your dc wants a placement year I think asking what practic al support is available and % of students who find placements is a very sensible question.

My dc is currently on a year in industry and learning loads, but they were definitely lucky to get such a great placement!

Have you offered to proof read his applications? Or can his careers service help with that? Spelling/grammar are an obvious thing to check, but also he needs to make sure his application uses the language used in the job criteria. Many companies are now using AI to filter out applications that don't meet their criteria.

When my DH was applying for jobs a few months ago, some companies sent rejections within 24 hours, in the middle of the night and/or at the weekend - we assume they had not been read by a human!

I completely agree. Placements sound like a fantastic course benefit, but if you can't get one....

@DuesToTheDirt @blusta Yes. We have been talking about misselling earlier in the thread. I think it’s now time for universities to be honest about what % get placements and, importantly, how they get them. Not everyone has contacts. It’s such an important element to a course that advertises a placement year it seems utterly wrong that they are not available. It can also be dispiriting for the student.

If the placement is part of the course, surely the contents of the work must relate to what is studied? Ideally you would expect dialogue between the university and the employer to ensure the work was at the required level and breadth. Otherwise what is the £2000 going towards if the student does DIY for every element of the placement?

Certainly for DDs degree (business) the ‘year in industry’ needs to be relevant and meet criteria. I’m a little suprised that students have been able to use contacts so successfully as the university will want to check they’re getting an appropriate experience. Maybe that depends on their degree though. At DDs uni the fee for the year is 20% and they have to submit a reflection, which is apparently marked. The employers advertise specifically for ‘interns’; ‘placement year’ and ‘year in industry’.

Im not sure it’s totally universities at fault. A number of companies have withdrawn their placement offers this year as not feasible. Perhaps due to Rachel Reeves?

@Ellerby83 DD was also down about it all with 30+ applications, online assessments and so many interviews. She has had a fair few rejections too. Then 2 made offers last week. Both VERY good ones, so hang in there! Unless it’s a rejection, he’s still in the running. But I agree it’s a tough process! I expected it somewhat but DD didn’t. Good luck to your DC!

I'm not sure it's all the universities' fault either. I imagine the year in industry landscape has changed rapidly since COVID, political and economic uncertainty.Pwrhaps pre COVID there generally were enough placements for all those who applied and persevered.

As a parent I always knew the onus is in students to find placements. At all the university open days and applicant days,can parent has asked the question ' what percentage of students on this course do a placement'

I also know if no-one who got a placement through contacts. It might happen, but it doesn't appear to be the common way.

@fortyfifty It is absolutely the fault of universities to not know the landscape regarding placements. It’s yet another example of attracting students into courses just for the sake of expansion and money. The universities should closely monitor how well students are getting placements because they know! Those that don’t do placement revert to a standard year 3. It’s not good enough to blame the companies and take no action.

@NotDonna I agree the last budget has caused more problems. However universities with contacts should have contacted their known companies and taken some soundings. Of course they already know it’s been difficult for students to get placements (for years due to uni expansion) but still keep advertising the courses. They have the data. The British economy has barely grown but universities offering these courses, have expanded to beyond what the placement market can stand. They owe it to students to revise course descriptions and expectations.

@TizerorFizz i agree. DDs uni does not seem to have ‘contacts’ in industry. However, at no time have they said they did. The only uni I know who says they do (and definitely do) is the Business School at Bath Uni. The many other universities we visited did stress that there is no guarantee of a placement. I think that’s their get out. However, nor did they provide any stats regarding likelihood. It’d be very interesting to see these, I agree! Nor did any provide any honesty around the difficult process involved. I expect if they did very few would apply for the 4 year option. Having said all this, DD has obtained one and even if she hadn’t it’s been a huge learning experience.

To be fair to universities, students apply to courses with a placement year 3 years before that placement is scheduled to begin. You can't deny there have been huge changes in graduate prospects in just a very short space of time and year in industry schemes will be part of that. I hope universities will be painting a most realistic picture to prospective students now with this knowledge.

Perhaps they don't make the message as explicit as they ought to but for those who enquire, the universities are transparent with numbers. There's no need for freedom of information requests.