August 2011
 Is student placement worthwhile?
Camilla Bush, who graduated with an Honours degree in Management with HR from RGU. She nominated Ark Occupational Health, winner of Best Placement Provider, Northern Star Business Awards 2010
"From a student’s perspective, a placement offers the chance to gain valuable experience in industry which would not otherwise have been available. This experience and exposure to industry undoubtedly makes your CV more attractive to employers. The majority of students find the value of placement to be much deeper that the incentive of being paid. I spent 48 weeks at Ark Occupational Health and having the opportunity to put academic knowledge into practice and being exposed to a taste of a future career acted as a great motivator for performance and desire to achieve. Placement builds confidence and helps students develop vital business etiquette skills which can give candidates an inconceivable advantage in today’s graduate market. Essentially a successful placement is a ‘head start’ in the business world and payment for this is a complete bonus."
 Alexa Guignes, a 20-year-old management student from the Toulouse Business School in France, currently working for Energize Sales & Marketing
"For a management student like me, an internship represents a fantastic opportunity to learn and gain professional experience in an area of business which interests me. I am keen to pursue a career in marketing so this exercise greatly complements my academic studies. For others, an internship would be a great way of making sure their choice is correct for them before they apply for jobs.
Internships also offer very good personal and practical experience which I think puts you a step ahead of your contemporaries when it comes to entering the world of work full time.
Marketing modules formed a major part of my degree, and my internship at Energize Sales & Marketing is giving me the chance to observe and learn how the theory behind marketing is applied in a professional environment."
 Professor Rita Marcella, Dean of Aberdeen Business School
"Giving postgraduate students the opportunity to test their learning in practice through placement is something we regard as core. The majority of our undergraduate students undertake a very valuable year-long paid placement; others take part in shorter unpaid placements or industry projects.
We are very grateful to the thousands of organisations, both large and small, which provide placement experience and for four years have sponsored a Northern Star Business Award for placement hosts. These are nominated by students who feel that their placement opportunity has been an outstanding one that has made a real difference to their career prospects. Every year student feedback tells us how much the placement is appreciated and that excellent experience has ensured that RGU students have consistently performed so well in graduate employment surveys."
 Beth Jenkins, Campus Marketing Manager (UK & Ireland)
"At Shell we invest heavily in providing fully assessed, intense, paid, eight-week summer internships, which we position as a route into the organisation. They do require considerable time and effort but more than 80% of interns get an offer of employment as a result, which makes them an economically efficient recruitment tool for us.
We offer internships in a variety of engineering and commercial areas and our engineering interns are usually placed in Aberdeen to see the industry first hand. The opportunities we offer give students an invaluable insight into the work they might be doing, to meet senior managers in that area and to understand what the organisation is looking for.
We are very conscious that it’s also an important chance for the interns to assess Shell too, to see whether the culture meets their aspirations. A career is a partnership and internships enable both parties to understand each other before making a commitment. Luckily for Shell our interns seem to like what they see."
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