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Internships, Placements and Shadowing

Discover the different types of work experience you can do and where you can find opportunities.

Boosting employability with work experience

Work experience is invaluable. In the competitive job market, work experience provides:

  • valuable employability skills
  • commercial awareness
  • occupational awareness
  • practical examples for job applications
  • networking opportunities 
  • the chance to apply academic knowledge in the workplace

You'll also gain a clearer idea about what job suits you.

Internships

Gain graduate-level work experience during summer vacation or term-time.

Placements

Undertake a 9-12 month work placement to accelerate your career.

Work shadowing

Gain a better understanding of roles and sectors through observing employees in the workplace.

Insight Days

Experience what it is like to work in a professional environment and learn about an organisation’s structure and culture through insight days.

Global work experience

Overseas work experience is a great way to develop your skill set while immersing yourself in a different culture. Use our guide to start planning your experience. Explore our resources to help you find opportunities.

Unpaid work experience

We don't advertise unpaid internships. However, there are some sectors where unpaid internships are common. Understand your employment rights around unpaid work experience.

Assess and develop your skills

Our graduate framework identifies the core attributes you can develop as a student. You can use it to

  • recognise the skills and attributes you already have and identify those you need to develop
  • reflect on your experiences and the value you are gaining from them
  • find further opportunities to develop your own set of attributes
Graduate Framework
Explore Careers Modules
Consider Volunteering