Professional Training Placements

Information for employers

The Professional Placement scheme provides students with one-year paid employment, typically from June or July of their second year.

Each student will have successfully completed two years of their four year course in Economics, Business Economics with Finance, or Business Economics (the third year being spent on Professional Placement). All students will have completed a common first year embracing Principles of Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Computing and Contemporary Issues in Global and Domestic Economics. At second year level, they will have studied Micro and Macro economics and Introductory Econometrics and, depending on the programme they are studying, will have additional background in Finance, Business, Applied Economics, Formal Methods and Econometrics. By the end of their second year, students will have experience of producing written material, making presentations, teamwork, computing, quantitative techniques and information searching.

This scheme has proved attractive to many employers and the benefits to employers are that the students provide an intelligent, short-term, relatively risk-free and inexpensive resource. The students are able to undertake a wide variety of tasks in one or more of the areas of business planning and management; marketing; statistics and market research; finance and economics and operations research.

They are all trained to Part I honours degree standard with solid backgrounds in economics, statistics and mathematics. In addition they have computing skills encompassing spreadsheets (Excel); econometric modelling (Stata and also some students will have experience using EViews). The students in the past have proven very useful in teams requiring research assistance.

In recent years the School has enjoyed successful student placements at many leading commercial companies (in the City, industry and retail) and with Government departments. These include Bank of England, HM Treasury, JP Morgan, Schroder, UBS Warburg, State Street Bank, Barclays Bank, HSBC, Inland Revenue, CBI, ExxonMobil, ABN Amro, OFGEM, Oxford Economic Forecasting, Post Office, IBM, Atkins, 4Cast, Experian and Hedgefund Intelligence. If you wish, we can put you in touch with one or more of these employers who are willing to provide testimony to the benefits to be had from the Professional Placement scheme.

If you would like to discuss the scheme further please contact:

Jo Evans, Placement Tutor
Email J.Evans@surrey.ac.uk or

Diana Corbin, Professional Placement Administrator
Tel: 01483 689171
email D.Corbin@surrey.ac.uk.

Information for students

The School's Professional Placement scheme gives you the chance to spend part of your programme with an outside organisation. Some placements, for instance, are in economics, statistics or operational research departments of large corporations, some are in the City institutions and others are in government departments. Many, though by no means all, placements are based in London while, occasionally, they are based abroad. Students are typically employed as Research Assistants to Economists at organisations such as JP Morgan, Schroders, H M Treasury, Bank of England (all in London), providing an invaluable opportunity to see how Economics and research divisions operate in major financial companies, or to be a part of government economic policy implementation in one of a number of government departments. Most of the above organisations employ an industrial trainee from Surrey every year.

During the Professional Placement you work normally as a salaried employee, gaining invaluable work and life experience. It is intended to enhance both your future employability and your capacity to focus on your Final Year studies and career choices.
 

Recent employers

Recent employers include: Bank of England, HM Treasury, JP Morgan, Schroder, UBS Warburg, State Street Bank, Barclays Bank, HSBC, Inland Revenue, CBI, ExxonMobil, ABN Amro, OFGEM, Oxford Economic Forecasting, Post Office, IBM, Atkins, 4Cast, Experian, Hedgefund Intelligence.

The School's Professional Placement Tutors maintain and develop contacts with many carefully selected organisations. During your Second Year you will be given the opportunity to attend a range of placement interviews with prospective employers. It will be your task, with guidance from us, to convince them that you are the right person for the placement. In recent years the vast majority of Economics students have applied for and successfully completed the Professional Programme.

This programme is carefully supervised and assessed. The Economics School's Professional Placement Tutors will visit you twice and a `work place' supervisor is appointed to help you. The Professional Placement is assessed in several ways - by means of reports from the Professional Tutors and the work place supervisor, a report from the student and an oral examination. A student who satisfactorily completes the Professional Placement will be awarded the Associateship of the University of Surrey in addition to the degree.