2012 ASET Competition – chance to win £500 if you’ve been on placement

Interested in writing about your placement experience to persuade others of the benefits of integrating Work and Learning? If you can articulate, in 900 words, your experiences from your recent placement, you could win £500. ASET are looking for short essays which have the ability to inform others about the value of placement experience, clearly express the value of your learning and do so in a lively and enthusiastic manner.

Download the leaflet for full terms and conditions: WIN £500

Visit the ASET website to see last year’s winning entry: http://asetonline.org/comps.htm#essaycomp

The closing date for entries is Friday 4^th January 2013.

The importance of work experience

A new research report has hit the news this morning that emphasises the importance of work experience.

The report from High Fliers Research shows that employers are recruiting more graduates – but also that there are record numbers of graduates chasing these jobs. The report also warns that graduates from the ‘Class of 2012’ who’ve had no work experience at all whilst at university stand little or no chance of getting a job offer from the country’s most prestigious graduate employers – and that a record 36% of this year’s graduate vacancies are expected to be filled by applicants who have already worked for the organisation during their studies.

Media Reports:

BBC – Graduate jobs ‘taken by work experience students’

Guardian – Graduates without work experience face struggle to secure jobs, report says

Mail Online – ‘Jobs bottleneck’ as graduates struggling to find work creates backlog

The full report can be downloaded from the High Fliers Website

The Careers Service and Placement Support Service can help our students and recent graduates to secure relevant work experience opportunities. Visit us on Campus or Online

Thinking about Placement? Not sure what the benefits are?

Top 10 Benefits of Placement

Taken from feedback from UWS students who have undertaken placements:

• Improve your career prospects. Employers are very interested in placement experience.
• Boost your confidence
• Improve commercial awareness and business acumen
• Build people skills such as communication, problem solving, team work and self management
• Improve knowledge about yourself
• Opportunity to network and build up industry contacts
• Develop new skills
• Transfer theoretical knowledge into practical experience
• Clarify career plans
• Make your CV stand out from the crowd

Visit www.uws.ac.uk/placement for more information, or pop into the Employability Link  on Paisley Campus, or Student Link on Ayr, Dumfries & Hamilton Campuses.