Engaging business through undergraduate placements

70 talented Business School students, every year

As part of their undergraduate degree programme, each year around 70 Business School students spend a year away from Durham working in an organisation on a business placement. This is an optional component of all the School’s undergraduate degree programmes and takes place after second year, prior to the final year of study.

Preparation for a placement year starts in the students’ first year and continues through to the end of second year with a series of briefing sessions, panels with students returning from placements, workshops and mock interviews conducted by recruiting organisations such as IBM, L’Oréal and PricewaterhouseCoopers, who coach our students to perform at their best in challenging assessment centre and interview situations. In this process, they are supported by the School’s Placement Team: Placement Manager Alex McNinch and Associate Professor in Accounting and Employability Co-ordinator Jan Loughran. Early in the autumn, Jan organises a ‘boot camp’ to help placement applicants develop their CV, interpersonal and interview skills etc. and to start the process of making placement applications.

Nearly all students who actively engage with the support provided are successful in obtaining a placement. These can be in a wide range of organisations from manufacturers like Nissan, retailers such as Aldi and TJX (TK Maxx), large service organisations like Hilton and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, online businesses such as ASOS, investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley; other financial services companies like GE Capital, high street banks and big four accountants, software developers, pharmaceutical companies such as GSK, consultancy organisations such as SAP and other large global business including Warner Brothers and HP Enterprise. There are also some public sector opportunities in the civil service, government agencies and the Bank of England, plus some students have been able to arrange placements in other countries around the globe. International students can undertake a placement as part of a four-year study visa. Placement students are generally paid and in the region of £15,000 to £25,000.

For employers, placement-year students offer a great opportunity to get young, talented and enthusiastic people into their organisation. It enables them to set-up a recruitment pipeline to monitor and assess young people working in their organisation over several months to see if they have the capabilities needed for a permanent recruit. If they do well, many students get an offer of a permanent role, subject to successful degree completion, at the end of the placement.

Typical placements run a year from June/July although they must be at least forty weeks to qualify. Occasionally, after good performance, a student’s contract is extended with them continuing to work through the summer before returning to their final year.

Some students are allocated to a specific role for the period, while others may find themselves in a scheme that rotates them through three or four roles during the year. The Placement Team keep up-to-date records of where everyone is placed and how they are progressing during the year. They are the main link with the School during the year out. All students are also assigned a Placement Tutor, a member of academic staff who visits the organisation, meets the student and their line manager and discusses student progress. Academics taking on this role value the opportunity to visit students in situ and keep up-to-date with the business world.

Dr Philip Warwick, Associate Professor in the Business School, is one of the Placement Tutors. He was responsible for visiting seven students in 2018/19. He made visits to students at ASOS and Danone in the autumn and others at Lidl, Hilton and IBM in early April. Philip commented:

“I really enjoyed my organisational visits in October and April. Seeing students I have taught as first year undergraduates, thriving in a work setting and meeting their line managers is a very rewarding part of my role as an educator.”

Most of Philip’s students were based in and around London in 2018/19, with one in South Wales and one in Denmark. Students are also expected to complete two pieces of assessed work for their Placement Tutor during the period of their placement. Both of these assignments require students to reflect on their activities in their role and to think about how it is contributing to their development.

Once back in Durham, placement students generally perform very well in their final year of studies with 49% of placement students achieving a First-class honours degree in 2018. Equipped with the skills developed in their placement year, they tend to be highly motivated and good at time management and planning their work schedule.

Shraddha Gohel, Hilton Hotels Group

Shraddha is based at the Europe, Middle East and Africa HQ in Watford. She is part of the Leadership and Talent Development Team acting as office manager, organising a range of development programmes such as the graduate recruitment programme, and maintaining the management and accounting arrangements which ensure that the Talent Development Team work is charged to the appropriate hotel cost centres within the Group.

Francis Lloyd, Lidl

Francis is in a small team of interns on a rotational development programme. He has worked as a supervisor in a huge regional distribution centre as Shift Manager in a Lidl store in Cardiff and spent some time at Lidl’s UK HQ in South London. He has had to manage a team of staff, been responsible for a just-in-time logistics network and presented his work to a group of senior managers.

Nathan Indrakumar, IBM

Nathan has spent most of his year working at the HQ of Three, the mobile phone network, in Maidenhead, Berkshire. His organisation, IBM, have been undertaking a major consultancy contract for Three. Nathan has acted as the Project Manager, working between the client and IBM, and coordinating the activities of the IBM team. He has monitored key performance targets, developed and updated a project risk register and ensured that the project remains on target.

To find out more about our undergraduate placements and read more from our students, please visit durham.ac.uk/business/business-placements