Going on an Industrial Placement

You may choose to go on an industrial placement for any number of reasons - to gain work experience, earn a little money before your final year, a way of taking some time away from studying - the reasons will differ from student to student.

I hope this information about my experience will help you make up your mind by letting you know what to expect from a placement in a small technology company.

I am studying Applied Computer Science and have recently completed a placement year with Hireserve, based a few miles from Reading in a village called Mortimer.

Hireserve began in 1997 as a leading innovator and supplier of e-recruitment software primarily aimed at the employer market but with some recruitment agency clients too.

Today, Hireserve is working with a broad range of industries and organisations throughout Europe.

There are currently nine employees based at the Mortimer office and three in the Rotterdam office.  

As previously mentioned, there were a number of factors that encouraged me to take up an industrial placement:

• To be able to put into practice what I'd learned in my first two years at Uni

• Gain some real experience of the working world, so I have something useful and relevant to include in my CV

• Earn a little money before my final year (or more to the point, clear some of my overdrafts...)

• You get to spend a second year on your final year project, and an extra year at Uni

• You will potentially be offered a job by your placement company when you have finished Uni

•It’s a new experience. It’s something a little different from Uni, but still immensely useful and worthwhile.

Back in June 2009, I completed my years work placement with Hireserve as their first placement student. The vast majority of the work I completed involved programming in Oracle PL/SQL, but my work often involved working with other technologies such as HTML, Javascript and Ajax.

Throughout my placement I spent time learning and researching “best practices” regarding web and software development, including software security measures, data validation, software testing and a whole host of other important aspects of development.

I’ve also used third party tools for a number of different applications, from Javascript libraries and graphing suites, to customizable WYSIWYG text editors.

During my placement I gained some invaluable skills and experience, which I feel I perhaps might not have been able to gain from simply completing three years at University.

Something I particularly liked about the job was the fact that I did such varied work. I was usually involved in some main project of my own, with at least one or two other smaller pieces of work on my to-do list. Some examples of these side projects included bespoke development projects for customers who required enhanced functionality for a certain part of the system, support calls requiring me to identify problems with the system and to correct them, performance tuning in certain parts of the system or research projects, which often involved trying to find any “best practices” for developing certain scripts, or simply researching a technology to further my knowledge in that area.

Some of the major projects I was involved with were:

• Giving the software’s help system a complete overhaul, by changing it from a list of static HTML documents, to a set of dynamic and fully customisable help pages.
• Altering parts of the system to make them compatible with the standard web browser on a Blackberry mobile device, whilst leaving them unchanged when viewing the software in a standard web browser.
• Working on a Javascript drag and drop interface for allowing clients to create their own reports to query the master database.
• Altered a key part of the system, which now allows candidates applying for jobs to upload several documents to the database through a single form, whereas it used to be done one file at a time, over several pages.

The work I did at Hireserve varied on a daily basis, with new support calls or requests for development projects coming in every day, meaning I was never left without anything to do; there are always new challenges to look at. The rest of the team at Hireserve are also great to work with. They are all friendly and professional, offering support and advice whenever needed.

There are many great benefits you get from a placement year, which you perhaps wouldn’t have access to at University.

You will receive a years worth of professional training, which you should be able to use to your advantage for your dissertation, your final year at Uni, and of course any job you apply for after graduation.

A placement year is great to put on your CV, as it shows potential employers that you have a significant amount of experience in this job sector compared to many new graduates.

You will have two years to work on your final year project, with an option to change if you feel that what you have learned from your industrial placement could help you write a better project, about a different subject.

Due to the current economic situation, it may be a better idea to try to stay at University a little longer to put off looking for work for another year.

I believe that now I’m back at Uni for my final year, I have been able to make some more informed decisions about which modules would be best for me to take, and that I will be able to manage my time and organise my coursework more efficiently.

This placement has really helped me understand what to expect after Uni. I now know what kind of job I want, the size of company I will be looking to work for, their location, etc.

In summary, I think an industrial placement is one of the best things you can do with your third year. Sure, it has its downsides, like your house mates trying to persuade you to go to the Union on Wednesday nights, when you know you have to get up at 7 the next morning, but I feel that it is a fantastic experience all the same. You get to see the perks of being a student, and having a full time job at the same time. You'll find you’ll learn new things every day, and over time will feel much more competent with what you are doing. You'll learn how to use and work with a number of technologies; some you will look at in great detail, others you will only have to learn the basics, but everything you learn on placement will be of use to you either in your final year at Uni, or later on when looking for that first graduate job.

Jason Dugdale

Junior Technical Consultant

jason@hireserve.com