Engineering Placements for Students

we don't do many placements but they were all sorted out a long time ago..... has he left it until now?

I can't offer any advice specific to the area of interest of your son unfortunately. I think the problem is it has become so formalised in recent years, whereas I did similar to your son and sent individual letters in the early 00's, placements with us (large engineering company) are all managed centrally as per graduate entries so if you're not in there the September before you miss the boat. Madness really but they are very popular and we generally get some excellent staff from them. All I can say is keep trying but they may just be oversubscribed already. Plus there is a certain amount of belt tightening starting already and generally early professional recruitment is the first casualty.

I think it's the amount of applicants companies get, overwhelms the HR functions that look after placements - at the company I work for, we got >1000 applicants for 12 engineering placements at just one site. I'm interviewing for placements for next year, I just don't have the time to go through all the CVs in detail.

One thing that will go far ime, is to contact people directly through LinkedIn. We get a lot of these from students outside the UK and they do get more attention.

Late yes, but he had his hopes set on a scholarship type placement that he had applied for a long long time ago, but wasn't successful.

He started approaching other companies quite a while back, but, in hindsight I do think that was on the late side. His Uni's Placements officer hasn't been much help either...🙄.

It's the complete lack of responses that seems odd. Even when he has been able to track down individual who you might think were the person who would deal with this.

Not sure hybrid working helps - placements students require higher levels of supervision. We still take placements for a paid 12 months - one has just returned as a full time employee after finishing his degree. It does work if employers are willing to invest. May be try some of the "recession" proof industries - I expect some companies are starting to batten down the hatches for what is expected later in the year - try energy , green technology, anything to do with controls/ software engineering, drones?

Is there a jobs board in the university engineering department or is there a university careers service?
I got a summer job between my 3rd and 4th year at uni from a notice board at the end of term (probably online now). The engineering department and careers service should be there to help. A tutor may be able to point where those are.
Otherwise is it relevant to work as electricians mate / apprentice on a site for the summer? Probably fairly relevant to understanding the not so wonderful world of work and gets some cash in the pocket.

Not sure hybrid working helps

Structural engineer at a small company here, definitely agree with this.
Our office is completely closed Monday to cut costs, then we are on a rota for the other days. It’s hard enough dealing with an apprentice.

One of mine is at end of yr2 M.Eng. (mechatronics and autonomous control systems).
He's off to the Alps for a summer, avec old van, bike, mates and some beer.
He's starting to think about placements - but is also wondering about looking to study abroad for a year or two, perhaps see if there are companies who run international placements...🤷‍♂️
I predict the van, bike and boy will be in Spain next summer. 😉

Eldest daughter is in Babcock for the second summer but sorted it out months ago even for the second time.
Worth looking at the bigger companies and looking at summer graduation places. Even making contact will be good fro future prospects.
Not a lot of use for this summer though sorry

I used to work at one of the UK’s biggest engineering companies and I was involved in setting up an undergraduate placement programme. In a big corporate there were a lot of hoops to jump through like security checks, getting them onto the HR system so they could be issued with a ID pass, access to IT as well as making sure it was a ‘proper’ placement with learning objectives and outcomes as well as payment. Application were done online as it took about 6 months to set-up so finding one for this summer might be tricky.

One route would be to contact the relevant professional body as we used to work quite closely with them in our sector.

perhaps see if there are companies who run international placements…🤷‍♂️

Trouble is there’s this thing called Brexit…we’d forever get graduates asking why they couldn’t get placements in the US or Australia and we’d send them to Barrow, because Walney Island was “overseas” 🤣

I get the feeling that the lack of a need to do a placement has resulted in a lack of attention from the Uni to push placements.

Not much we can do now it seems...

Similar position to my son as he is finishing his second year of engineering degree and should be doing a third year placement but it's looking likely he'll just do his final year next year instead....third year placements have just dried up and, a couple of weeks ago, he said only 4 students on his course had secured a placement

Feel free to DM me if you want me to look over covering letter and CV. Prob some schoolboy errors that can be picked out.

At very least make sure each covering letter is in a plain text email (no one going to open unsolicited word doc or pdf these days), tailored to each co and addressed to a specific individual he would like to work under. Need to be very focussed detailing exactly what he wants to do career focussed, why that co, what he wants to learn and what he can offer. If it’s audio then go all in on a specific part of audio eng. No one wants to take on someone fluffy that doesn’t really know what they want and needs spoon feeding.

We take summer, year in industry and grad placements and are crying out for elec engineers.

I'll PM you details of the company.

@dovebiker - I have the misfortune of being in Barrow for the next 3 days!

Have you tried Sellafied Ltd?

@sillysilly

That's a very good point about unsolicited emails and attachments. Not something I considered.

I'm sure he's actually had to send real letters to some as there was no viable contact online!

Thanks to all for your suggestions and thoughts.

Fortunately, this is just a summer placement, not a year out, so 4 to 8 weeks ideally.

Its not the end of the world, and I'm sure he can keep himself busy with some projects of his own. Plans for a workshop at home are growing...!

Have you tried Sellafied Ltd?

This. There's cracking riding up in this corner of the world... Not a bad place to spend a summer...

On the flip side, I was pretty close to offering a placement year for a student recently but the university have been so ****ing unhelpful it’s unlikely to happen.

My cousin does some Uni' careers fairs for the place he works looking for new entrants. Could be worth trying companies that attend these.

My cousin works for Labman btw.

It does seem really hard. My son is just about to start one for a full year (he is on a combined masters, so in effect has already done his batchelor degree). Even with this, and with doing a 10 week summer internship previously he only had 2 offers, and these came really late.

Advice above is all good - don't rely on the university, find firms that accept placements (not all do, and plenty stopped 'cos of covid) and approach individuals via LinkedIn etc.

We're a micro company and as such, not particularly appealing to students on placements. That said, we approached one university with whom we had an existing relationship (to the extent that we had commissioned work from their engineering department) and managed to secure a year in industry student (its optional at this university). The placement teams were on the ball and very helpful and we had around 6-7 applicants - all of whom I would have been happy to employ i.e. tailored letters and CVs and excellent qualifications.

The placement teams had a very good handle on the attitudes of individual students and knew exactly which ones to approach directly on our behalf (in addition to the generic 'posting on notice boards'). Obvioulsy the majority of students look to obtain placements at the multi-nationals but it our intention to ensure that our student gets to experience working 'across the business' and not solely on engineering issues. We are paying a reasonable salary and expenses.

I'd advise your son to try and contact smaller businesses in your area as 'we're' often over-looked!

If he's into audio electronics, has he considered PA companies, both manufacturers - but also production companies? He could spend the summer on site end-using the products which could prove a valuable experience before trying to design stuff?

The live events industry is desperately short of staff at the moment, so if he's got a brain and a willingness to learn and graft then he'll do fine and probably have a lot of fun.

I do lighting rather than audio, but the audio DSP stuff and the visualisation systems for designing a loudspeaker system for a given space are pretty fascinating.

e are paying a reasonable salary and expenses

Good on you. Most these days are below minimum wage, and only acceptable becuase they are a placement for under a year, or because they are (just) above the MW for the age of the student, but would be below for people over 21/24.

There should be someone in the Dept who is a liaison on this sort of thing.  Often the best approach it to go via alumni, and they will have a database of people and their contact details.

For the big internship recruitment, others are right, most of these are wrapped up by Christmas time (maybe some into late winter) (I used to run the module that supported this type of stuff for geologists).

Ours have just finished interviewing (not really his specialism though). I think the year placements are sorted at Christmas and the summer ones generally it's done arround Easter when we have an idea of workload.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, of my cohort only one got a permenant offer from their placement and they turned it down.

Rather than going after the big companies with organised programs, he might have more luck going through the yellow pages. I got mine simply by phoning up every chemicals company within a 15mile radius and asking them what they did and could I have a job. Most were honest that all they did was blending and wholesale so there wasn't much I'd be interested in but struck lucky and found a fairly niche testing lab tucked away on and industrial estate. There'll be a small company busy making some little widget for an industrial machine somewhere.

Alternatively, have a look for TV jobs doing running for the technical crew. It all wireing, RF and computer interfaces, so won't be particularly related to his degree but is mostly populated by electronic engineers. And it's not making coffee and emptying bins for production.

As an engineer at an industry leading multi-national who USED to take loads of placements/graduates I'd say make sure his covering letter includes some extra-curricular activities like the time he re-built a 2 stroke motorbike or designed and 3D printed something or rebuilt a guitar amplifier changing the tone etc and why he has a passion for the subject

Just a list of academic achievements would put me off honestly

The amount of kids who couldn't even tell you why they chose the subject of engineering, or that wanted to be a mechanical engineer but didn't know which way to turn a nut to loosen it was probably why we don't take so many anymore

If he's already doing that then there is more specific advice above

If he doesn't NEED the placement get him working as a technician of some kind, that's probably the most value adding thing, real world hard working experience. That was what I did and I'm doing extremely well off that approach, I'd say it's my biggest advantage, way more than my first class degree anyway

Well, blimey the lad's gone and done it for this summer, THANK THE GODS!!!

He's managed to get 12 weeks internship at the Rutherford Appleton Labs near Didcot, doing something complicated to do with electronics and designing things that shove electrons around and making them do amazing things. I will not pretend to fully understand. He gets paid for it too, but it's not much.

Now, the challenge begins as to finding him some sort of place to live down there. We tried one of the Oxford colleges which is a sister college of the one he is at, but unfortunately they have nothing available. Short term lets are going to be pricey and tricky to arrange, but might be the only way forward. Thankfully we have a fund stashed away that will help pay for this, we knew that it might be needed at some point.

Good effort. Sounds like a good opportunity.

Mine has decided to only complete B.Eng., rather than the M.Eng. he started on. The course continues to not really deliver what was promised, or really needs (third year robotics student who has never been given access to the robotarium or ever had someone from industry or PhD student in department share thier work?).

So he's going to go travelling and likely look to complete a master's in his return.

@matt_outandabout
That sounds a bit unfortunate for your lad. Hands on time is so important for engineers. Would he consider M.Eng at another Uni in the fullness of time?

My son was at a real low this time last year. His course required that he did lots of stuff he wasn't going to specialise in until the end of 2nd year. Totally different story now, he's had a year of mostly electronics which has returned his passion for the subject.

@matt_outandabout I run a Robotics and AI group at Intel in Bucks. I don't have open reqs for standard hiring right now but our graduate rotation scheme will take applicants (would be 18mo of rotations, one 6mo period in robotics, maybe another in video/vision). More importantly we have pretty good riding nearby and a very bike friendly & sporty site! 👍

I used to work for Qualcomm a large semiconductor international who do have smaller offices in the UK. I personally recruited interns for both a year or the summer. The latter was more common and easier to get management to agree to.

The process though centrally managed was actually filtered by the local engineer allocated to that intern. This meant filtering out 100s of applicants who did not read the job specification (i.e. US residents who didn't realise it was in the UK and needed to have the right to live and work in the UK). I did this while doing my day job so the process could be slow.

I notice Quallcom have two interns positions advertised for the Cambridge office. Just follow the link to the careers and search for internship.

These were always paid internships and very much joined the team they were allocated to. The long term advantage for the company was to find promising graduates that could be offered chance of employment at a later date. You also could use the intern position as a way of applying to any position on the company later and if you'd impressed as an Intern it could increase your chances of an interview.

Don't give up, there are overworked engineers on the other end keen to hear from you but struggling to find the time to respond quickly.