I'm currently completing a one-year MSc Artificial Intelligence course in University of Southampton, after spending a year after graduation working as an Analyst in Accenture.
I feel my placement helped show I have the transferrable skills needed to be disciplined for a sustained period of time, independently. Completing my placement with Airbus Defence and Space in their Mars Rover project also shows I am able to cope in a demanding environment and overcome tough challenges.
One piece of advice I have is, having a polished LinkedIn profile is so important in today’s corporate environment and so is going to hackathons and attending community meet-ups! They will give you a practical edge that companies truly value. When you attend these, keep in mind how you were able to overcome not just technical challenges, but people problems too. This is a goldmine you should be able to tap into in any interview. Good luck!
I am currently working for Network Rail as a Graduate Engineer. On the Scheme I have done some work with the telecoms design team, but right now I am with Telecoms Asset Management.
I feel like my placement was absolutely essential in obtaining my current position. The process of getting the year in industry was stressful but I would have gone through that same stress in my final year anyway, so it saved me a lot of headaches. Additionally, the experience made the assessment days so much easier, I was able to get an offer very early on and only continued to apply for jobs because I wanted to stay in London. I got my final offer around February, which took off a lot of stress from my exams.
I cannot recommend a year in the industry enough to any student. The industrial placement year and grad schemes are pretty much the exact same process so they will know how to tackle it. Additionally, employers value experience much more over the grade you get in your degree.
I've recently worked as a Software Engineer at Visa and Cisco.
My placement definitely helped me to answer questions during an interview with relevant experience. Interviews in general were easy to get as I already had a year of experience.
Having a year worth of experience while looking for a graduate job opens a lot of doors and gives you more choices. Be consistent while looking for placement jobs. As long as you don't give up, you will find something.
I'm currently a Software / DevOps Engineer at the BBC, working in the World Service department. I'm responsible for the infrastructure that underlies a new Simorgh project. Tech JavaScript, React, AWS, Jenkins.
Currently, I have been developing a scale-able load test written in Terraform which uses Locust Io
The skills that underly most of the tech we have today is the same as the skills I learnt on my placement. Despite language differences between JavaScript and C#, the patterns for working remain incidental. This is great since I was able to transfer all of that knowledge to my current job that works under a different stack. The industrial placement essentially taught me how to be a Software Engineer in practice, and I owe the start of my career to the people I have worked with at insight software.
Below is my advice to students who are considering a placement year:
1. It is hard. Everyone now days expects a Bachelors Degree and many companies are filling their positions with interns. You will be rejected, and there will be a lot of rejections. This is a numbers game, so for most companies, you have to approach it that way.
2. Don't just look at the big companies. Yes, they will offer a lot of money, yes they will look great on paper. But most of the time, big companies move at a very slow rate, have monolithic managerial structures and are using old, outdated tech. Try to look for medium-sized companies, they are usually the ones that treat their interns as humans and will be a blast to work for, even for less pay.
3. Practice technical interview questions: If you start now, in two months time you should be able to tackle them. They are the bane of all software job searches and they do not appear to be going away.
5. Practice interviewing. It is a skill in itself to interview well. Use the career services to your advantage. Doing a mock interview with Claire is also great. Practice Social Engineering in general, Software is easy, people are hard. Despite being a software engineer I spend most of my time dealing with people. I recommend "Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It" By Chris Voss as a great reading primer.
I'm a System Architect for Pegasystems. I work in professional services, I consult and develop customer journeys in a customer relationship management software provided by Pega as a service.
My placement helped a lot with people skills. I did my placement as an Associate Software Engineer and was mainly focusing on manual testing, the technical skills I gained at Accenture were not re-used in my new work however the soft skills helped tremendously. Working for Accenture also gave me a lot of bargaining power when applying for Pega, it gave me something to talk about during my interview.
The main advice I would give to someone considering a placement is DO IT!
No, seriously, It's a great experience. If you're going to be studying and not doing an industrial placement you will be a little lost after graduating. If you have never worked in a working environment, which uses the skills you learn during your degree, going on an industrial placement will leverage the skills you learn at university and you will be able to pick up stuff that is only discussed in theory during your courses.
For example, there was a small coverage of what Scrum is in my course but until I actually did stand ups, read user stories, etc in my industrial placement, I did not get a feel for what it actually is or how it effects the working environment with a team. Besides, applying for your first job will be MUCH easier having a year of experience with a company and you'll practically be a fresh graduate with 1 year in your belt already. Recruiters would definitely focus on you more, compared to those who don't have any experience in their field at all and it will give you something to talk about during your interviews.
It will also give you the opportunity to try out a job as well as see a bunch of others. I got to know what everybody on my team did and their roles, it gave me a really good idea of what I might want to (or not want to) do in the future. There are far too many benefits of doing an industrial placement vs not doing one!