Placement Podcasts: The Employers' Perspective

There is much discussion about the triangular relationship between students, employers and the University; but what do employers really get from placement students?

As a development of the Placement Podcast Project, the University of Huddersfield is following students throughout their placement lifecycle.

Our initial work in Placement Podcasts was presented at ASET in 2007 and internationally at WACE in Singapore, June 2007. We have developed a DVD of our work. Podcasts can also be viewed on the web at:

http://www.hud.ac.uk/tqef/placementvideo.html

In this further development of the project, we’re looking at how students ‘grow’ over the course of their placement, from their initial enthusiasm, through the realities of a job onto their return to university.

We’re also really interested in what employers get out of employing a placement student and have asked them as part of our filming.
Early findings show that employers like:
• The freshness of student ideas
• The desire to learn
• Their ability to ‘do anything’ and ‘everything’

The paper will discuss how the podcast project is progressing, with an emphasis on what employers gain from their placement students. Video footage will be shown to complement the paper.