Impress during your placement

The majority of courses here at the uni provide a work placement or work experience module giving you a taste of what life is like working in your chosen field.

Placements are great; they can build your confidence, enhance your skills and in some cases, pay you!

They can give you the chance to impress potential employers and even secure a job before you’ve graduated so it’s important to be the best you can during your placement.

Be organised

Arrive on time and make sure you keep a diary and a notebook on you. It can be really helpful to write a to do list so that you don’t have to try and remember everything you’re supposed to be doing.

Dress for the job you want

Make sure you look professional at all times but at the same time, dress so that you’re comfortable. Wearing sky-high heels that you can’t walk in might not make the best impression!

Use your initiative

If you see that something needs to be done, offer your assistance. If someone looks a bit stressed, offer them a cup of tea, the little things are surprisingly important.

Smile

Be friendly and smile. Your boss will notice if you’re sat around looking miserable and bored. On the same note, being polite is extremely important; manners go a long way.

Need a hand finding your placement? Each faculty has a placement officer who will help you find a suitable placement and support you throughout your time in the workplace. Find out who you need to get in touch with from your school here.

Mark Eslick is a Placements Manager for the Science and Engineering School.

“Sandwich year placements are a fantastic way to enhance skills and knowledge learnt at university, and can make you extremely employable. More and more companies are keen to take sandwich year students from various academic subjects. From speaking to employers, we know how highly they value the students that do a professional placement. In fact, an increasing number of students are being offered graduate positions with companies they are placed with.

As the manager of the University of Brighton Science and Engineering Placements Team, each year we have lots of students undertaking exciting placement roles with a diverse range of organisations such as Rolls Royce, IBM, GSK, Sainsburys and Molson Coors, to name a few, as well as lots of local companies. Every year we see our students coming back from being on placement transformed through having learned new skills and completed innovative projects”.

What’s it like to do a placement? Read Naomi and Stef’s blog posts about working at BBC and Disney to find out.