Placements

Benefits to your business:

• Recruit from a wide range of student talent from across many of our world class academic departments
• Engage the skills, enthusiasm and cutting edge thinking of a York student for up to 12 months
• Provides a strong pipeline for future recruitment 
• Offers a cost effective, low risk solution for your business needs
• Peace of mind of employing quality and well supported students
• Promote your organisational values and culture to the graduate market

“Recruiting candidates part-way through their higher education for a year is an important investment in your future talent pipeline and will benefit the wider industry. Not only will the student gain valuable, first-hand experience of working in your business, you will also be able to equip them with both the technical and ‘soft’ skills which will be vital on graduating and entering full-time work.” – Cogent Skills

• Year-long placements are managed by Careers and Placements. The exception is Chemistry, which manages its own programme due to students completing placements in their final year of study.

• The placement is an assessed module of the University; students are required to write a series of blog entries and an assessment based on reflective practice to pass the module, and to then be able to graduate with a placement descriptor on their degree transcript.   

• Some students will join the University on a 'with year in industry' route (generally in the Faculty of Science or within the School of Business and Society). All other students can 'opt in' to add a placement as a recognised part of their degree; depending on their department, this will credit them 'with year in industry' or 'with placement year'. The placement module requirements are the same for all students, however. 

• The role must be challenging and prepare students for graduate level roles; students who are on a 'year in industry route' will generally be seeking to apply their specific subject knowledge and skills to the placement, however this is not a requirement, offering flexibility to students and employers.

• Students undertake their placement in the penultimate year of their undergraduate degree; integrated Masters students can complete a placement between year 2 and 3, or year 3 and 4.

• Explore our placement employer information sheet (PDF , 219kb) for more details about recruiting a York student and our placement criteria, and our Placement employer handbook 26/27 (PDF , 549kb) to view the expectations that the University of York has of placement hosts. 

We are here to make the process of recruiting a placement student as simple as possible so please do get in touch if we can support you in any of the following ways:

• Project scoping
• We can provide guidance on job descriptions along with job templates if required.
• Contact careers-placements@york.ac.uk to discuss your recruitment needs. If required, we can help shape up your placement year offer to attract the appropriate candidates for your opportunity.

• Advertising
• Once your placement role is finalised, we can advertise through our free online portal, Handshake. For roles exclusive to York students, we recommend advertising in January/February.

• Shortlisting
• We can shortlist the most suitable candidates and send CVs and applications for you to review.

• Interviews
• We can help with interview arrangements and follow-up.
• Recruitment must be finalised by 31 May for students and the role must start between the end of June and early September.

• Paperwork
• If you are unable to arrange contracts directly, we can provide appropriate forms of agreement.
• You will be required to sign and return our placement due diligence documentation, prior to a student's start date.

• Salary
• You would be required to pay the student at least National Minimum Wage (NMW). We recommend the 23 and over NMW wage band. More specialist, technical roles are likely to require a higher salary.

A placement is aimed at providing our students with real life experience of professional, full time work; therefore we encourage students to use initiative and take responsibility in coming forward with any issues. 

Our Placement employer handbook 26/27 (PDF , 549kb) summarises the key areas and required learning outcomes that employers who have recruited a York placement student should be aware of. It also outlines the procedures and communications that the University of York requires so that we can fulfil our duty of care to our students. In summary:

• Dedicated contact
• Both the employer and the student will be assigned a dedicated contact for the duration of the placement, offering support as and when needed
• The Placements Team are on hand Monday - Friday to answer any queries, via careers-placements@york.ac.uk.

• Support
• We will meet with you and the student to see how the placement is going and to answer any queries.

• Assessment guidance and placement evaluation
• We offer guidance for the student to complete their university assessment (reflective blogs and report)
• We will request your feedback and evaluation of the experience as a whole.

• Jack's Placement with Helix Securities LLP/Limited (PDF , 333kb)
• Harriet's Placement with Tesla Studios & Mu Studios (PDF , 211kb)
• Valerie's Placement with National Geographic UK & EMEA The Walt Disney Company (PDF , 320kb)
• Aaron's Placement with Primark (PDF , 557kb)
• Emma's Placement with Centre for Process Innovation (PDF , 713kb)
• Yelena's Placement with Bentley Motors (PDF , 36kb)