Advice on work placements

Stand out from the crowd with an NTU work placement

Many of our undergraduate and some of our postgraduate courses offer a great opportunity for you to do a one-year paid work placement. Undergraduate courses that offer this are sometimes called sandwich courses as the placement year is sandwiched between the first and final year of your course.

The benefits of doing a work placement are that you will: 

  • Learn more about organisations and prepare for professional life. 
  • Improve your employability by developing skills and knowledge that employers look for.
  • Test out your career options – you may find you don't want to work in that area after all and change direction.
  • Make contacts and get a relevant work related reference.
  • Build professional recognition within your field.
  • Improve your final year performance.
  • Stand out from others in the crowd with a really impressive CV.
Example paid NTU work placements
CourseJob titleCompanyApproximate salary
BA (Hons) International
Business
Purchasing
Assistant
L'Oreal, London£18,000
BA (Hons) Interior Architecture
and Design
Junior DesignerPMC Associates
Ltd, Hong Kong
£17,000
BA (Hons) Furniture Product
Design
Junior DesignerNestlé£10,000
MSc Engineering (Electronics)Software traineeSchlumberger£30,000
BA (Hons) Interior Architecture
and Design
Junior Interior
Architect
Dalziel and Pow,
London
£15,000
MSc Engineering
Management
Cost
benchmarking
and budget
setting
Nissan, Leicester£12,800

Finding a work placement

A work placement is not guaranteed. Finding a work placement is your responsibility with support and advice from the placement team and the other support services at the University. It is a challenge and a really valuable experience of applying for a job. Here is some important advice to get you started:

  • Check to see if the course you are interested in has a placement.
  • Visit the placement team for your course as soon as you start. Take some ideas or a list of possible companies.
  • Do some skills training. Both the Careers service and the Students' Union offer sessions on interview practice, applying for a job and writing your CV.  
  • Prepare your CV. The placement team can help with this so that it is written in a style that is familiar to UK employers.
  • Practise your English as much as you can by going to as many in-sessional English sessions as you can (these are free of charge), speaking up in class and working hard on your presentations to improve your confidence.
A Broadcast Journalism student recording herself on placement
A placement student in a laboratory
An Art student on placement showing her portfolio to an employer
A student monitoring someone on a running machine
A Photography student on placement
Students carrying out scientific experiments on placement in a laboratory

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Last modified on: Thursday 2 May 2013

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