Students

Undertaking a placement provides you with valuable work experience in a relevant business or law area and gives you the chance to develop a range of work-related skills demanded by graduate employers. Having demonstrable work experience dramatically enhances your overall employability upon leaving university.

What are the benefits of doing a placement?

A placement year may be an essential part of your degree or optional, or you may be considering a shorter internship.

Placement years usually occur between your second and final year of study and, count towards your overall degree. Often, they can help you to explore potential career paths and provide you with valuable work experience, whilst developing transferable skills for the future. If you can’t take a full year out, consider an internship. These may be full or part time and can last anything from a couple of days to three months.

Enhance your career prospects

Work experience, whether a placement or internship is useful to help you develop professionally. Not only does it strengthen your CV, it also helps you stand out from the crowd when applying for graduate roles. Employers will see that you are proactive and passionate about your chosen career path and have key industry experience. Its taking the opportunity to ‘test-drive’ a career and can make an informed decision.

Expand your network

During the course of the year, you’ll develop professional relationships with your fellow colleagues and clients. You never know who you’ll meet, so networking could be useful for your future job prospects.

Discover the real working world

You will be given real responsibilities to challenge you and it will get you into the habit of the 9-5 routine. It’s a chance to get ahead of the game and gain industry level work experience before you graduate and it increases the odds of you securing a graduate job. You’ll also get paid, so it’s an opportunity to save money for your final year too.

Improve your academic performance

We ask you to complete a work-based portfolio as it is a useful document to showcase the skills you are developing. By reflecting regularly, it can help you to see your accomplishments and understand where you could improve in the long term. These real-life examples can then be used in graduate job interviews.

Research shows that those who completed a placement year received a higher overall degree grade because you have a more-enhanced skill set.

Where could you work?

  • Thomas Rhodes – Jaguar Landrover

  • Ellie Jones - Hitachi

  • Jac Edwards – BDO

  • Lucy Phillips – SAP

  • Sarah McArdle – John West Foods

What we can support you with

Faculty based support

The PSU team are here to help you at every stage of the process and there will be someone in the office from Monday to Friday every week, including over the summer. Once you secure a placement, we will continue to support you alongside an allocated visiting tutor.

Contacts with employers

We have developed contacts with lots of organisations and local businesses, many of whom advertise exclusively with LJMU every year.

Alumni advice and networking

For undergraduates, alumni events can be a friendly introduction to the art of networking and building relationships. You also have the opportunity to benefit from their advice on how they are developing their careers.

Application checking

Before you send any applications off to employers, we advise that you bring your CVs, cover letters and application forms to us for checking – this will save you a lot of work in the long run.

Practice interviews

You can book mock interviews with us to prepare for when you are invited to the real thing and we will give you invaluable feedback at the end of the session.

Psychometric tests

Numerical and verbal tests are a big part of the application process with larger organisations - we can set you up with practice tests to ensure you get through to the next stage of the process.

Placement support

Once you have secured a placement we will guide you through the relevant paperwork and processes which will help you make the most of your time on placement.

We offer this support via 1:1 appointments, Microsoft Teams meetings, email, telephone calls or visit us in our office.

Contact us

Email: psu@ljmu.ac.uk

Telephone: 0151 231 3448

Address: RB206, Redmonds Building, Liverpool, L3 5UG