Finding a year 3 work placement

[Instacrap]

DC has just started year 2 of their psychology degree. The course has the option of a work placement in year 3 which they are keen to do. However, we are under no illusions that finding one will be easy, contrary to what they tell you at the open days! From what I've heard the uni actually give little help and you are basically on your own with many students being unsuccessful and ending up having to go straight to year 3 with the added stress of having to find year 3 accommodation last minute.

They want to give it their best shot and start looking now. They do have a meeting with their tutor to discuss but already skeptical how useful that will be!

Would be grateful for any tips, experiences or empathy!

🙂

Which university?
DD is at Bath and has just started her placement year.

There are lots of discussions and useful advice about this on the WIWIKAU Facebook group (if you are not already on it).

Uni careers service- tell him to go to the employer talks

HigherIn
Prospects had an advice page with links
Mental health charities

Get experience- start volunteering. It is a placement year but many employers still want experience

Start applying early, and apply for lots.

Finally, he needs a thick skin and resilience.

Best of luck ⭐️

Their other discussion should be with their University Careers Service, who will know a lot more than their tutor. The Careers Service at my place gives practical assistance with CV writing, application writing, interview preparation, as well as holding reams of information about placements & internships.

Really good internships/placements are highly competitive, which may translate into "student speak" as "the university didn't help me." But there are excellent schemes out there.

GradCracker, the company websites. Really good placements are open for recruitment now, lots open between now and Christmas. And students also find places right up until August. My DD started her placement year in July - applied in January - also a Bath student.

Does your DD know what she wants to do in her placement year?

Worth widening what counts as a psychology placement. The NHS assistant psychologist type roles that everyone wants are few and far between, but research assistant placements are a very common route on psych courses, and plenty of them come from simply asking. DC could look at which lecturers' research they genuinely find interesting, at their own uni and ones nearby, and send a short, specific email asking whether they'd take a placement student next year. Mental health charities, schools and SEN services, HR and occupational psychology teams, and UX or market research firms all take psychology students too.

Before the tutor meeting, it's worth getting hold of the placement handbook and checking whether a self-found placement needs approving and by when, and asking how many of last year's cohort actually got one. That tells you how hard to push.

The bigger employers' schemes tend to open in the autumn, so a tidy CV this month and a simple spreadsheet to track applications would put them ahead of a lot of the year group.

Do they want a Psychology placement or just a general grad type role?

My dd thought about doing a placement but she really wants to be a clinical psychologist and she was told the psych-type placements were few and far between and often unpaid. So she instead did an intergrated masters and tried to get relevant experience whilst at uni.

Ds (year 2 Politics) has started applying for general grad type placements, in things like data analysis and consulting. There’s quite a few open now - just need to keep an eye out. HigherIn is a good site. He’s not particularly used the uni careers office (he started applying before term started) but there’s loads of advice online.