Returning from a Placement Year
Returning from a placement to university life can evoke a mix of feelings. It may feel strange to return to familiar routines, especially after being immersed in a work environment for year. It can also provide an opportunity to reflect on your placement and consider experiences, skills, and insights that you have gained. Having worked for a year, you may feel more confident, inspired, and clear about your next steps. Some of you may even hold a job offer, whereas others may feel uncertain about next steps, which can prompt you to reevaluate your goals.
At the Careers Service, we strongly encourage you to reflect upon your placement and identify your learnings and areas of growth. This can involve concentrating on new skills that you have developed, strengths that you’ve discovered, your likes and interests, your successes in work, etc. Below, we describe a step-by-step approach to help you reflect upon your placement year…
Step One – Identify Skills Developed
List both technical and soft skills you developed or gained and consider how these skills connect to your future career path, or indeed what employers are seeking. Soft skills can include communication, problem solving, critical thinking, etc. If you need help getting started, look at the Careers Service Skills Audit.
Step Two – Evaluate your contributions
Think about projects or pieces of work that you have been involved in during your placement. Have you accomplished anything that you are particularly proud of? Think about your role, responsibilities and the impact you had. What was YOUR contribution? What difference did YOU make? You can use the CAR technique to help tell your story. If you are struggling to get started, watch our ‘Articulating your skills’ video for inspiration.
Step Three – Reflect upon company culture
Consider how well you ‘fit’ into the organisation? Did you join any staff networks, take responsibility for organising social events, etc.? Did the company values align with yours, if so, how? Ask yourself whether you want to work in a similar setting in the future.
Step Four – Market Yourself
Now that you have identified your skills and got examples of projects / pieces of work where you’ve had an impact, make sure you tell others! Update your CV, LinkedIn profile, portfolio and any other professional platforms that you use to market yourself to employers, e.g. GitHub or social media such as Instagram, etc. If you’ve got photos from your placement, use these to illustrate your work (Please note, you may need to seek permission from your employer).
Step Five – Build Your Network
Now that you’ve got professional work experience, don’t forget to connect with your colleagues! Using a platform such as LinkedIn can help you stay in contact with those you’ve worked with, who may be able to help you in future, or indeed you could help them! It’s good practice to contact former colleagues every so often to keep those conversations open for the future.
Step Six – What’s next?
Use your insights to make informed decisions about your next steps, whether that be your final year at university, further experiences that you’d like to have, what has / could influence your career path, etc.
It is also helpful to identify gaps in your skills, knowledge or experience that you’d like to work on moving forward. The Careers Service can support you in exploring your next steps and offer suggestions on how to build on the experience of a placement year. Please see our Appointments and Drop-In information on how to access professional careers advice and guidance.
