We are all aware of the high levels of graduate unemployment and the rising costs of attending university.

It’s not all bad though!  An article in Personnel Today discusses how important undergraduate work experience is, both for students and employers. Maria Floud, senior graduate recruitment manager at accountancy firm Grant Thornton, states that the increase in university fees is making employers reflect on their schemes and realise how important it is to attract students from an earlier age.

“The internship model used as a key pipeline to the graduate programme is very successful. We recently won the ‘Best Placement and Internship’ award by Rate My Placement, due to the focus we put on ensuring this programme to find great talent earlier on.”

Congratulations to Grant Thornton and thanks for our mention – hopefully this will give employers and students the oomph and encouragement to undertake a placement or internship scheme  :)

If you’re a student there is still time to grab a placement or internship this summer so check out the opportunities on http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/search

We are also interested to hear your thoughts so drop us a line with your comments below.

Thanks,

The RateMyPlacement Team

BP operates at the frontiers of geography and technology. We want you to experience what we do first hand.

The Ultimate Field Trip 2011 is a team competition. The winners will spend six to eight weeks on a paid internship with our operations in the North Sea. During the internship, you’ll visit an offshore platform, take a trip to the Forties pipeline, go to Edinburgh to see the world-famous Fringe Festival and visit Wytch Farm – the largest known onshore oil field in western Europe.

How to enter

Innovation and efficiency are essential for long-term sustainability. The 2011 competition focuses on our UK North Sea operations. The coming decades will see significant asset restructuring as some 500 platforms and around 13,000 km of pipelines from the North Sea oil and gas industry approach the end of their economic lives. Currently, 450,000 people work in the North Sea energy sector including some of the finest scientists and engineers in the world.

This competition gives you the chance to study the issues facing our North Sea operations and come up with new ideas that will extend the useful life of the oil and gas infrastructure – and potentially the oil and gas fields themselves.

We want you to use your imagination. We’ll be looking for innovative thinking.

To take part, you’ll need to get a team of three people together and register on our website via the button below. We’ll send you an email to confirm what to do next and how to submit your entry.

If you get through the first round, you’ll take part in a regional semi-final. From there, we’ll choose the best teams to go through to the grand final in London – where industry leaders will judge the entries.

Important dates

• Register online: Now
• Initial submissions by: 17 December 2010
• Short-list: 17 January 2011
• Semi finals: February 2011*
• Grand final: April 2011*

For full terms and conditions please refer to our website: bp.com/fieldtrip *Exact dates to be confirmed

Are you up for the challenge? Click the button below to find out more and apply!

View the company profile and find out more!

The results of this years Universum UK ‘ideal employer’ poll are in and according to Ri5 the results are as follows:

This year’s top ten ideal employers for Russell Group business students are: 1) PricewaterhouseCoopers; 2) Goldman Sachs; 3) KPMG; 4) Google; 5) Ernst & Young; 6) J.P. Morgan; 7) HSBC; 8 ) Deloitte; 9) BBC; 10) Apple. (This contrasts markedly with the top three national choices of Apple, Google and the BBC).

The top ten for Russell Group engineering and IT students are: 1) Google; 2) IBM; 3) Microsoft; 4) Apple; 5) Rolls-Royce; 6) Shell; 7) Intel; 8 ) BAE Systems; 9) BMW; 10) Ministry of Defence.

What do you think? Any surprises? Or just as you would expect?

A topic that is frequently discussed within Graduate Recruitment is that of supply and demand and the issue of graduate skill sets being appropriately moulded for the world of work…Never has it been so important to have relevant work experience and transferable skills, as well as a good degree classification in order to gain a position within a relevant field.

The CIPD’s latest ‘Focus on Graduate Jobs’ calls for government policy to concentrate on “understanding and meeting the real skills needs of employers” in addition to providing better information about the “realistic” employment and salary prospects available to graduates.

In this climate, arm yourself as best you can and take up as many opportunities as possible. Whether that’s through a part time job, work experience via an Internship or Placement or getting involved with your student union. Plus, be realistic about what is actually achievable!

As always feel free to comment

We have already offered the BEST placement opportunity Ever… Now, we are looking for 25 students to be our On Campus Brand Managers for 2010/2011 and take the BEST part time job EVER!

Be quick to apply as competition is fierce; we only have one spot per campus and we’re expecting applications to come in thick and fast.

To find out more information and to apply click here.

In this recent blog from Grad Expectations, Rob talks about what is good experience and how important it is to pick the right industry and have the right attitude. A timely piece for some, it may help those of you still looking for work experience before September or for your placement year next year!

Ticket to the Table – A degree is not enough!

A stark reality for many Graduates leaving University is that your degree, whilst something you should be proud of, is still just a ticket to the table. It is the piece of paper that enables you to have a different conversation with organisations. But on its own however, it will not guarantee you a job!

If you degree is just a ticket to the table, you must therefore seek to differentiate yourself from your peers!

How do you differentiate yourself from your peers?

If all the other applicants have the same (or similar) degree to you, you have to differentiate yourself by getting the ‘Right’ Experience!

What is the ‘Right’ Experience?

For me there are two types of ‘Right’ Experience:

1. The Right Industry:

Some jobs will require a certain type of industry specific experience. If this is the case, this is what you’ll need to get, which I know is easier said than done. However, the right industry experience does not always mean getting that experience in that exact industry. What I mean by this, is that many employers when looking for industry experience are really looking for confidence that you know the industry and more importantly the vocation you’re applying for. For example, you can still prove that you understand and apply your marketing expertise if you’re working in a department store. You can do this by proving that by applying your marketing expertise you’ve helped increase sales and customer satisfaction. This approach is what we call ‘transferable experience’, because your proving that you can transfer your expertise from one area into another.

I should say however, that some technical disciplines will need specific experience. This is really a way of them sifting through the very many applications they get. However, don’t be put off by this. My best advice here is really get creative in how you will get this experience e.g. placements, volunteering, shadowing, research etc…

2. Right Attitude:

The right attitude is something that recruiters always look for, but those looking for a job find it hard prove. For me, as a recruiter of Graduates, the right attitude is as follows:

• You prove that you have drive and ambition – you get involved in activities outside of study and working part time. This could be anything from clubs and societies through to volunteering.
• You prove that you can achieve real results – it’s one thing to say that you’re involved in different committees etc, but what are you delivering through them? I always look for proof of what people have achieved rather than just their participation. E.g. increased the membership of a club by 500% in 6 months, makes me take notice.
• You prove that you fit their team – this is by far the most difficult thing to prove, but what all employers are looking for is someone who fits their team. What runs through my head is; Would I like to work with this person? They way you prove this is through the description of who you are, your achievements and your interests. Whilst all of the other experience is great, if we see you as someone that we wouldn’t want on our team – you’ve got no chance!!

A Last Word… The key to getting the right experience is to be creative and strategic. You have to be thinking like an employer – that is, what are they really looking for in their future employees? By doing this you can then start to be more creative in the full range of things you activities you get involved in, and you can be more strategic in making sure that those activities give you the ‘Right’ Experience!

A familiar idea that is frequently discussed on RateMyPlacement; this latest blog from Grad Expectations is all about making the most out of your placement. A timely piece for some, it may help those of you starting your placement year over the coming months to set off on the right foot!

Sitting in the Corner

On Thursday this week an email arrived in my inbox with a spreadsheet attached. In that spreadsheet was a list of all the Graduates and all the placement students in our company. As a Graduate Programme manager I make sure that I know everyone of these people. However, on Thursday as I scanned through this new list I saw a name that hadn’t been there before.

‘That’s interesting,’ I thought to myself as I checked out who this person was on the directory. Under their name it said that they were a Placement Student. Instantly I picked up the phone to find out more. It turned out that this was true, Mark was a placement student who’d been working in the company for the last 8 months. He’d been brought in through one of the ‘alternate routes’ rather than through the central system, which sometimes happens. And it was only now that the standard reports were showing that he ‘existed’.

“So are you planning to apply for a job with our company once you Graduate?” I asked Mark after he told me his story. “Probably,” he replied. “But I haven’t really enjoyed my time here,” he continued. “I don’t really know anyone and all I’ve been doing is sitting in the corner and analysing spreadsheets for the entire time.” ‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘poor guy.’

After setting him up to talk to some other people so he could find something more interesting to do, I wondered why he wasn’t doing more to get the most out of his placement.

Get the most out of your Placement

Generally I see that there are 3 reasons people do a placement:

1. Their course requires them to
2. They want to get the experience to build their CV
3. They want to land a job with that company once they Graduate

Regardless of the reason you’re doing a placement, it is essential that you use the opportunity to the best of your advantage. And, unlike what Mark was doing (i.e. sitting quietly in the corner) this means doing 3 key things:

1. Know what you’re seeking to achieve Whenever you start any new job or project, always think about what you want to get out of it! This doesn’t mean being purely self motivated, but on a placement you have a great opportunity to develop new skills and new contacts. So if you start with clear goals in mind, you can be more focused on achieving them. For example, if you want to get experience in a specific area of work, then make sure you tell your manager this, as they will usually help you achieve it.

With Mark, he had a goal of trying to get a job after Graduation, but I had to ask him to find that out. If he had made his goal explicit, like other placement students, he would have hunted me down and told me what he was trying to achieve, and then I could help him.

So morale of this part of the story is that if people don’t know specifically what you want to achieve during your placement, they can’t help you – you have to have goals, and you have to make these goals known!

2. Build Your Contacts One of the things I find is really common in organisations is that most managers are happy to spend time talking to new people. And more importantly, they’re happy to talk about themselves to new people – managers love talking about themselves!

With this in mind, against the goals of what you want to achieve, make sure you build your contacts. This doesn’t mean you have to be a ‘networking freak’ who cold calls every manager in the business, but I would encourage you to pick out certain managers and schedule some time to buy them a coffee. When you do this, make sure you start the conversation asking them about their current role, their experience and then, any tips they have for being successful. Then talk about yourself and what you’re trying to achieve. Every manager I know (including me!!) loves this because it makes them feel important as they impart their worldy wisdom to help someone, which gives you the perfect opportunity to build your contacts.

As with my statement above, after they’ve talked about themselves, make sure you tell them what you’re trying to achieve. If they don’t know this, they can’t help you!

Even 30minutes of some-one’s time can open up a range of opportunities for you, if you’re prepared to ask. So do not sit in the corner, get out and make the time to talk to people. This is how you’ll get known and how you’ll find out about new opportunities.

3. Use your Initiative to Get Involved When you start your first professional job, knowing where the boundaries are can sometimes be tough. For many Students and Graduates, the fear of getting it wrong too often prevents them from really showing what they’re capable of. This to me is a flawed approach. With any Student or Graduate, what I want to see is them using their initiative and getting involved in things. If you just sit there doing only what you’ve been asked (as with Mark and his data analysis), you’re not really adding a huge amount of value to your boss or your company. So…seek to get involved.

How do you get involved? – One way is to use your initiative to look for simple things that aren’t working and fix them – I call this positive dissatisfaction and positive impact! Over my years of working I’m yet to see an organisation where every-thing’s perfect. This therefore gives you plenty of opportunity to do other value adding things to show what you’re capable of. And, a good place to start with this is to find out what’s keeping your boss awake at night.

As you look for things to get involved with or to fix, be sure to start small and build up. I’ve seen too many people take on too much too quickly and fail to deliver. So be sure to start with ‘quick wins’, or ‘low hanging fruit’ as they say, and build up to bigger things from there. It’s amazing how often fixing the simple things will help you get noticed…so don’t ever be afraid to show your initiative and get involved!

A Last Thought… Regardless of the reason you’re doing a placement, it is essential that you make the most of your opportunity. However, to do this you have to drive it – you have to make it happen. Within every organisation I’ve seen there are always people or managers who will help you, but as the saying goes – you have to help yourself! If you sit there in the corner like Mark waiting form someone to find and help you, it’s unlikely to happen. But…if you know what you want to achieve, if you get out and make contacts, and, if you show people what you’re capable of, then you will get the most out of your placement!

If you’re considering an industrial placement or internship in Engineering should check out the website Enginuity - dedicated to providing information on careers in Engineering.

As you know, the term Engineering is such a broad one when it comes to Careers and I doubt there are many outside of the industry who will know exactly what an Engineer exactly does!

So, check out this page on Enginuity – it goes some way to answering that question. It describes in some detail the different types of Engineer there are and what they get up to. There’s also a range of other useful information and ideas on the website that are worth a read.

Perhaps you could be the next Brunel, the famous engineer that is, not the University.

Return to Engineering Guide

Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughtout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers as they find a placement or keep us updated as to what they are doing on their placement. Click here to read all entries from our bloggers or click here to meet them.

Welcome along … TO MY FINAL BLOG!

Well, well, well, where to start! You have been with me since near the very beginning and have seen my adventure through the high’s and low’s as well as the ranks of Outokumpu Stainless. I must start by saying this has been an excellent experience for me and will hopefully aid me at University in my final year and help me along my chosen career path with the skills I have gained!! I hope everyone who is going on placement enjoys their time – but if you are not, do not be afraid to speak up and get your opinion across!!

I have been very busy here at work, I am currently sat in the office on my own and have mounds of paperwork piling up(which I am unsure how to complete!!) Due to my lack of experience of being a nester, people keep coming in and asking me questions which I do not know the answers too, therefore angering them as they cannot do any work but also angering myself as I do not know the answer!!! It is also absolutely thrashing it down outside and we may possibly experience a repeat of the Sheffield floods!!

So, I have had my leaving do and it was quite a good turn out to my surprise. I thought not many people liked me haha!! I got a lot of drinks bought for me and had a good drunken time. I dragged one of my good friends out so I could crash at theirs and not my Manager’s, as I did not want a repeat of last time!! But thank almighty, I was not as bad, just a headache on this occasion. I think i must have ate something that didn’t agree with me last time!!

At the moment I don’t think I will miss working as I am sick of all the early mornings, but I think I will once I return from ZANTE!! Where I will be flying to in four days time. I don’t think I will know what to do with all my free time and I will definitely miss all the people I work with, as I have made some very good friends during my time here.

I am struggling with things to say as it is my final blog, I think i should probably say something productive instead of blabbering on like normal. I will miss writing my blog as I have never participated in anything like this. Sometimes it has been good to get things off of my chest by expressing myself in this blog. I hope the new recruits can also make use of this function like I have!!

Overall I have had a good time on placement and I hope all of you guys get to enjoy the same kind of experiences!! I have also enjoyed writing my blog and keeping you up to date with my goings on. So this is the last blog and I am sad that I will probably not be writing another, but never say never!! So I am off to ZANTE!!

Bye Bye,

Farewell,

Good luck!

Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughtout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers as they find a placement or keep us updated as to what they are doing on their placement. Click here to read all entries from our bloggers or click here to meet them.

Afternoon all,

Sooooooooooo, It is getting very close to my little adventure of the Greek Island Zakythnos ( ZANTE!!!!) I am getting excited at the prospect of finishing my placement successfully and then the day after going on holiday!! As well as a holiday after that to Turkey!! Being on placement does have it advantages! You do have more money than when you’re a poor student. I can now afford two holidays and possibly the Leeds festival, good times!!

Not long left now, just three weeks I think. It will be sad when I leave as I have a lot of good memories from here and have picked up some excellent experiences, which will hopefully help me in the future. But now I am concentrating on becoming settled in my new role of CAD technician and becoming the master of nesters. I dropped a few clangers at first but who doesn’t drop clangers at the beginning of a new job??

Nesting, Nesting, Nesting and a little more nesting then a nasty nasty TRO (the dreaded paperwork after making a beautiful nest!!). I have learnt that the salespeople (excluding myself) make a lot of mistakes, which in turn makes the job of the CAD technician a lot harder as they may need to nest the same job 2, 3, possibly 4 times due to the inconsistencies of the salespeople, so this can become very frustrating!! And on top of that there is only Master nester Keith and myself, Protege Nester doing the nesting so this can become time consuming and people wonder why things slow up!!

It is a lot different working in the CAD office as things are still office/computer based but it feels a lot more manual, wearing my work boots, staff top and hard hat!! But it is a good experience as I get to deal with the shop floor employees (Blue collar) on a daily basis and I get to see their motivations to work, compared to those motivations which I saw in the office. And let me say they differ a lot, a lot of people in the works like to do a little amount of work. I must say I don’t think this job is as boring as Mike made out, it is quite interesting! A bit repetitive but you have more freedom and have chance to relax a lot more, but I do not think you need a degree in Business studies to be pro-efficient in this role.

So I have another 2 weeks to become the master nester and hopefully possibly secure a future? Maybe they have a job lined up for me? To surprise me on my last day? Possibly….. who knows….. unlikely.

I have a dreaded TRO on my desk here, so I suppose I will have to get on with this and call an end to todays blog! It’s my leaving do next week and I am once again stopping at my Managers house. I will try to be more well behaved this time and go a bit steadier on the ale, I don’t want a blow out just before ZANTE!! Not much going down apart from my leaving do and my departure, I now have to save up as much money as possible from my final payday and try to scrape through until student loan time in September!!!

Good times. Speak soon on my FINAL blog!!!

Adios