Blog » Placements ‘Are a win-win for Employers and Students’

Placements ‘Are a win-win for Employers and Students’

16th March 2015

ROGER Gilpin, director of executive search company Gilpin, explains how a placement is a win-win situation for both employers and students alike.

It’s a chicken and egg situation for many people seeking employment. You can’t get a job with-out a degree and graduates can’t get a job without experience.

There’s a growing impetus for employers and universities to work in collaboration to help increase the employability of young, indigenous talent here in Northern Ireland.

Placements (usually lasting between 9 and 12 months) are the perfect antidote to address this major issue. While they act as a great stepping stone for students to get onto the career ladder and gain invaluable experience in the workplace, employers can reap the benefits, too:

New starts bring new ideas: Placement students often enter the workplace with the ultimate goal of securing permanent, full-time employment after graduating. To help achieve this, the student will want to prove they are an asset to the business by bringing fresh ideas to the table and be as cooperative and reliable as possible. This in turn helps to boost productivity within the workplace and generate new concepts. 

Affordable and Flexible: Placement students are a cost-effective solution to an employer’s recruitment needs, with considerably less risk attached in comparison to more traditional hiring methods. In addition to this, the flexibility that comes with placements is often appealing to many scaleable business models.

Helps to Fill the Gap: Placement students are ideal to tackle small one-off pro-jects and provide staff cover if there is a skills shortage due to limited staffing levels due to sickness absence or annual leave.

Builds Stronger Relationships with Universities: Building up a positive reputation as a placement em-ployer gives businesses the opportunity to forge closer links with local universities and gain invaluable access to a number of contacts which can help generate more business. If a strong enough bond is established, an employer may also be able to advise on higher education courses, so that graduates leave university with the right skills and expertise employers are seeking.

If all students were accommodated in work placement programmes it would eradicate many issues post graduate and go a long way to ending the chicken and egg situation.

 

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