work placements

hertz

Im doing computing in college and weve got work placements in feb. But only handfull have interviews let alone jobs yet, its worrying at this stage. Is anyone in this boat?? Is it the general IT recession to do with it , but I thought companies are obilaged to take on undergraduates. ???

Any feed back would be good.

hertz..

Acidflash

I had the same experience last year when my class were going on work placement from june - december.some ppl didn't get jobs until august.I was lucky though, i was one of the first to get a placement.It was n the IT dept in Galway county Council. It was a very interesting six months to say the least.

Lump

I think the best place to start is the county council's, I know a friend of mine got a job there for his work placement. On my course we have to do three work placement in second year, AFAIK the college gets you the interviews, but after that its up to yourself to get the job, and if you don't get the job that they get the interview for, you have to go and find your own job.



John

azezil

Clare co. Council will be lookin for someone from janurary... maybe worth a go. I'm on work placement with them at the moment... the work is varied, u'll get plenty of experience.

And as lump sayed the college uaually gets the interviews but they do allow u get your own as long as u keep them informed, and don't be too picky with where u go either... as u can see i wasn't

p

Originally posted by hertz
Is it the general IT recession to do with it

Yep, that's what happens in reccessions.

...but I thought companies are obilaged to take on undergraduates. ???

Nope,
I don't know where you got that idea from.

- Kevin

Lump

HA HA, if they were obliged to take on the undergraduates then I would just stay like that for every and keep a job:)

John

Static

Have a look around for small, recently started, programming companies. While they mightn't have the stability/finances for taking on long term employees, they might find a work placement student for a handful of months very useful. The trick is to chance your arm. The most they can do is say 'no'.

Lump

Or kill you....... which could happen, it could I swear.


John

Static

The mafia isn't a small company 8)

leeroybrown

I did a 5 month work placement last summer (well between April and the end of August).

One week after I started my placement there was a general employee meeting. 70 lay-offs were announced and all the projects that were being worked on were canned.

So I spent 4 and a half months sitting around on IRc, surfing the web and eating mammoth fried breakfasts.

I really should have done something useful with my time with Linux or Programming but I didn't.

I was just hitting the start of the recession then, but it has really got going now and finding placements for everyone is proving hard afaik. Most people I know who are going on placement have nothing secured yet.

On the good side of things, a lot of companies will still be hiring co-ops as they probably won't have to break hiring freezes to do it and co-ops are a lot cheaper people to use to do all those time consuming things qualified engineers don't have the time to do.

ramius

I know what your going through my college where ment to get work placements last year for us, but they could only place a couple of people in are class at the local county council, the rest of us had to get the placements areselves i got a job working on a large communication companys website. My advise to you is to open up the yellow pages and send off CV's to 20 or 30 different companies asking/begging them for work experience. If you dont get a place us your spare time to learn all about LINUX, theres loads of jobs out there for UNIX admins.