Is a work placement year worth it? 3 Reasons it might be your best decision yet

Adding a placement year to your university degree may initially seem intimidating, but it can provide significant advantages.

Hear from Melanie about exactly how to pinpoint the best university 'FOR YOU'...

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When you're looking at university degrees, the idea of adding a year for a placement can seem daunting.

It can seem like you might end up a year behind other people.

Actually, in the grand scheme of things, having that extra year of placement might give you experience on your CV, and when you do graduate it gives you a significant advantage.

There are three ways that it does this.

1. Experience

One, it gives you experience of the workplace.

It helps you understand what kind of working environment you might like or dislike.

It might help you think about what you want to specialise in, in your third year of your degree. It might help you think about whether you want to go onto a masters. You can learn from it yourself.

2. CV Credibility

Secondly, it gives you something for your CV because if you look at job descriptions for graduate level jobs and beyond, you’ll find that 90% of what you're reading is going to be about the qualities, skills and competencies that they are looking for from candidates.

A year's placement gives you a great opportunity to be developing all of these and have something to evidence it with on your CV.

3. Networking & Relationships

The third reason why a placement might be good for you - you can build your network.

You never know, that placement might actually turn into your first graduate job when you finish university.