Work-Related Learning
Throughout the academic year employers can get early access to students and skills that support your business by providing essential work-related learning and experiences for students.
Many of our Schools have dedicated placement staff to facilitate courses with compulsory or optional placement years or modules.
Placements are the most popular way of accessing your talent pipeline early, allowing you to test out the potential of future hires and benefit from a skills injection into your business.
Click on the links below to contact the relevant School or contact our team.
Internships are typically shorter duration, paid work experiences of up to 12 weeks in length, that take place over holiday periods but can also be offered to graduates and may be as long as a year.
Employers delegate a specific piece work to the student helping them to broadening their experience including working with other employees, and supporting the longer term transition from University to the world of work.
Micro-internships are short opportunities, lasting less than 5 weeks, where interns have an opportunity to be involved with and support specific standalone or ongoing projects directly with the company.
Queen’s offers funding support for SMEs employing student interns.
Work shadowing is an excellent way for students to gain insight into the different types of careers and roles, that might be open to them when they complete their studies.
The University hosts a work shadowing week every Spring, offering participating companies an opportunity to showcase their organisation’s culture, working environment and employment prospects to students yet to land on their ideal career pathway.
Work-based projects offer students the opportunity to develop and utilise their skills in the context of a real-world scenario. They can be curricular or co-curricular, and usually require students to work independently or as a team to address a challenge posed by an external organisation.
The model benefits the organisation by providing access to fresh, enthusiastic and innovative thinking applied to a real business issue or need, without the additional cost of business consultancy.
University programmes supporting this type of activity include:
- Real World Consultancy Projects – four day programme were students work in groups to solve a ‘client’s’ real-world problem using design thinking
- Queen’s Business School Business Clinic – access to a student consultant/consultancy team to work on a specific issue or challenge experienced by your business
- Real World Challenge – one day offsite experiential day, students consider and try to solve macro level challenges e.g. climate change, working with industry experts