Hello,

I am a student in first year of university in the University of Derby (http://www.derby.ac.uk/computing/computing-bsc-hons?csId=&courseQuery=g403) I have qualified (as far as I know) to go to the second year of my course.

In the third year of my course (next year starting September) I will have to complete a years work experience in industry and I was wondering if there was anyone here who could suggest/offer me a good position for my work placement year.

Some information on the course:
It is a BsC (Hons) Computer course which teaches it's students a lot about how to design develop and build a good standard piece of software and web based systems (it also covers database systems). As far as I know it does stick to the .Net family of programming languages but we have been informed that we will be learning PHP and ASP in the second year.

Thank you

Great & nice subjects combinations

You must go for this

The idea is, is that I have all ready gone for this option and am looking for somewhere to go for a third year work experiance

Often universities (at least in my country) offer help when finding work for internships. You might want to check with your instructor to see if any placement assistance is available. If it isn't, then I'd suggest asking all of the instructors that you're on good terms with if you can use them as a reference on your résumé.

I am a student from the North West of England and I am currently working on placement in Germany. As for the searching and application process, be ready for a soul destroying experience. I searched for a placement for roughly 8 months before I had any real responses.

Luc Lieber wrote:
You might want to check with your instructor to see if any placement assistance is available. If it isn't, then I'd suggest asking all of the instructors that you're on good terms with if you can use them as a reference on your résumé.

I agree with Luc. There was a "Placement Tutor" at my University who was in contact with a few companies that often post job offers to them to distribute to students, it might be worth while trying to see if you have one at your University.

Have you tried applying to the big names: GSK (GlaxoSmithKline), Fujitsu, Microsoft, IBM, and BAE?

My advice is to perfect your C.V. and send them into all the local I.T. companies and software houses you can find.

Some C.V. tips, my bosses have just chosen a new interns for my team and I was privy to the criticism of the C.V.'s that were sent in.

A lot of them did not describe their course in sufficient detail, my boss in particular wanted a brief description of each of the most recently modules studies, and all completed modules that would be relevant to the job.

Another thing that was important aspect of the C.V. that was the skills that some people put down, "Can wait on tables in a restaurant" is hardly a worthwhile skill to include on your C.V. unless your applying for work in the food service industry.

For skills try and include what languages you have used (however briefly or long ago), any team working or leadership exercises you may have done (at both Uni and Work), any software engineering practices or methodologies you have used(SCRUM in particular is widely used in my workplace) and then other Computing related skills, such as building P.C's, networking and any Computing related qualifications (MCSE, CCNA and so on).

Also in your covering letter, you may want to include details of your best work, what you did, how you did it and so on.

Getting a placement can be a tough ordeal, but you have to remain resolute until you get one.

Best of luck and I hope you land a good one!