The Graduate Market in 2015
Chapter 4 Internships & Work Placements
Recruiting Graduates through Work Experience Programmes During the last decade there has been a very noticeable change in the purpose and aims of work experience programmes. Ten years ago, the main reason that many major graduate employers offered university students work placements was simply to help individuals decide which career sector they were suited to and to enable students to experience the type of work that graduates did in a particular industry or business area. There were few direct links between these undergraduate work placements and the graduate recruitment process. Today, for the majority of employers who offer paid work experience places, such schemes have become an integral part of recruiting new graduates. Students applying for work placements in their first or second year at university are selected through a very similar recruitment process to that used to recruit graduates. This means that once a placement has been successfully completed, recruiters are able to offer work experience students a graduate position, often a full year before students are due to leave university and several months ahead of employers who only recruit graduates during their final year of study. Many employers also consider that recruiting candidates who have proven their abilities during a work placement to be a more reliable way of employing graduates. Up to a third of new graduates are now recruited directly through employers’ work experience programmes (see Table 2.7 on page 13) and employers in sectors such as law, oil & energy, and investment banking are expecting to recruit at least half their graduates this way in 2015. Correspondingly, the number of paid work experience placements available at Britain’s leading employers has increased very substantially over the last five years (see Chart 4.1 ).
Chart 4.1 How Work Placements for University Students Changed from 2011 to 2015
10.2%
2015
7.0%
2014
5.2%
2013
2.2%
2012
10.6%
2011
15
-10
-5
0
10
20
5
Percentage change in work placements on the previous year
Source - The Graduate Market in 2015
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