Student placements and professional work experience
Boost your employability, build new skills, and get real-world experience with a placement.
Keele’s ambition is to prepare you for success, with employability embedded throughout our programmes. Whether you want to pursue a placement year, a placement module, or extra-curricular placement activity, our Placements Team will support you in achieving your goals and enhancing your employability.
Toyota placement year: Ellie's story
"I’m so much more confident and resilient, and I’ve come out of this year with a completely different perspective than I went in."
View transcriptA placement allows you to gain hands-on experience, develop key skills, and get a better understanding of the world of work you’re interested in, all helping to boost your employability when you graduate. You’ll also develop important networks and connections, which can be vital for your future career.
Abbie
Business and Enterprise Internship, Rolls Royce Aerospace"My placement year at Rolls-Royce Aerospace has been an incredibly valuable experience for both my personal development and future career aspirations. I gained a wide range of skills, from essential time-management and professional communication to more specialist marketing and stakeholder engagement skills. I also had the unique opportunity to learn about aerospace engineering, an area I never expected to explore, which gave me a deeper understanding of how complex global organisations operate."
Our placement offer
All undergraduate courses* offer you a placement opportunity. This includes either a placement year or an integrated clinical or professional placement, and most also offer a work placement module. Many of our postgraduate courses offer a post-study placement opportunity.
*excluding Apprenticeships and ‘top-up’ degrees.
Why do a placement?
A placement will provide you with a variety of ways to kick-start your career, increase your skills and clarify your goals.
- Gain practical experience and apply theoretical knowledge in a real-world setting
- Learn more about various career paths
- Acquire an understanding of how businesses function
- Build industry connections
- Employers use placement opportunities to recruit into their graduate jobs
- Develop the soft skills employers value including teamwork, decision-making and time management
- Collaborate with a broader and more varied range of individuals
My placement with Bosch: Byron's Story
"I was given a very high level of responsibility, and I feel like this has given me the true feel and essence of what it is like in the workplace."
Support with your work placement
Our Placements and Projects Team provides each school within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science and Faculty of Natural Sciences with a dedicated Placements and Projects Manager who will help you to secure short and long-term placement opportunities. From working with you to perfect that all important placement application, to arranging pre-placement preparation workshops, you will gain insight to enhance your position and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Find out more about Undergraduate placements
Find out more about Postgraduate placements
Types of work placement
You will have access to a variety of placement opportunities. The type of placements available will depend on the subject you study, but may include:
- Undergraduate Placement Year
Typically lasting between 9 – 12 months (although may be shorter depending on your course), the undergraduate placement year is taken between year 2 and 3 of your studies and will extend your degree by a year. On successful completion of your degree you will graduate ‘with work placement year, on your degree transcript. - Curriculum embedded short term placement
Typically lasts between 1 and 3 months and is linked to your course. - Employer-led project-based learning in curriculum
Typically offers you the opportunity within your course to work in groups on a project brief set by an employer. - Employer commissioned projects and consultancy
Typically, a live project and could be based within or outside of your course - Postgraduate placement
Typically lasting between 8 weeks to 12 months dependent on course requirements. Find out more about postgraduate placements. - Co / extra curricular placements and projects
These opportunities tend to not form part of your course and can include short term internships, vacation schemes, and insight events.
