The Value of A Work Placement

As the number of people completing degree courses rises, competition for graduate level jobs can be enormous.

Students have to do more and more to make themselves stand out from the crowd and one of the most practical ways to achieve this is through work experience.

Two weeks during the summer holidays, however, is usually not enough. Many university courses now include a year in industry, offering students the chance to gain some experience of putting into practice the skills they have learned in the lecture theatre.

One such student is Tim Chamberlin, who is studying for a BSc in product design at the University of Bournemouth. After his second year, Tim was lucky enough to be offered a year’s placement with electronic design specialists GSPK Design, based in his hometown of Knaresborough in North Yorkshire.

“It’s strange how it happened,” he said. “I sent off a lot of applications and forms and the one that came back to me was in Knaresborough.”

GSPK Design designs and manufactures electronic equipment of all kinds for a wide range of different purposes. Among its previous creations are specialist measuring devices to test the purity of water, and electronic connections which allow maintenance to be carried out on lifts.

During his 12 months with the company, 21-year-old Tim has been helping with mechanical design, graphics and computer-aided design. He used techniques he learned at university to construct virtual models of new products, testing them to check the parts would fit together as planned and that the result would have the desired appearance.

 Once the designs were completed, they were sent off to be manufactured, giving Tim a valuable insight into the way his skills could be used in a practical setting.

“At university, we’ve learnt the basics, but until you put it into practice, you don’t know how far you can take it,” he said. “It has been interesting to test the bounds and limits of my capabilities.”

GSPK Design, meanwhile, has benefited from having a new approach to some of its work, bringing in a fresh perspective.

Managing director Paul Marsh said: “It has been very interesting to have Tim working with us, contributing his ideas and playing an active role in the company.

“Because he was here for a full year, we were able to give him the same treatment as any other employee, meaning he got experience of a real working environment and he was able to do some valuable work for us.

“We wish him all the best with his final year and hope that some of what he has learnt here will prove valuable to him in the future.”

When some students leave university and take up their first full-time job, it can prove challenging as they learn to fit into a professional environment. For Tim, having a placement year has also given him the advantage of learning how to deal with new surroundings and the kind of challenges he would face in a graduate job.

“I hadn’t done anything like this before,” he said. “I was jumping head-first into a new environment.

“It was a little bit daunting, but everyone has been really friendly and I feel I’ve really integrated as part of the team.

“Having a year in industry gives you a real world perspective. The projects at university are all internal and you are limited in what you can do.

“This has shown me new ways of looking at things. Seeing your work going somewhere is great.”

Heading back to university this September, Tim will be using his experiences as part of his final-year project, which will assess what he has learnt during three years of studying and a year working with GSPK Design