Work-Related Learning
Throughout the academic year potential employers can get early access to students and skills to supporting business requirement by providing essential work-related learning and experiences for students.
Professional and Industrial Placements
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
Internships are typically shorter duration, paid work experiences of up to 12 weeks in length that typically occur over holiday periods but can also be offered to graduates and may be as long as a year.
Employers delegate specific work to do over this period where the student gets to work with employees of the company in order to broaden their experience which also aids the transition to the work-place.
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
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
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 accessing 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