Professional Training … The Wizard of Jobs
Friday 19 October 2012
"We must journey on until we find the road of yellow brick again" said Dorothy, "and then we can keep on to the Emerald City." The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L.Frank Baum.
If post-graduation employment is the Emerald City every undergraduate hopes to reach, then the journey from student to employee must be travelled down a yellow brick road of personal growth and professional development.
With the University of Surrey’s student employability standing at 96.9%, one of the highest in the country, it might come as no surprise that the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law placed well over 300 undergraduates into professional training posts this year - the largest number to date. In a tough jobs market, these largely salaried posts offer an unprecedented opportunity to gain workplace experience, giving students a marked advantage in the employability stakes when their course comes to an end.
Predictably, shrewd undergrads with a keen eye on the jobs market are now electing to pursue their career aspirations from the end of their second year. Through a placement, also known as the professional training year (‘PTY’), they can engage early with employers in their field, allowing them to test the waters and ensure that their chosen path is indeed right for them. A professional training year also addresses the problem of students graduating with insufficient practical experience to be employable, long before the ink is dry on the degree certificate.
Over coming months, our placement year students will be taking up positions around the globe from Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, Barcelona and Stockholm to Hong Kong, New York, Florida, Boston and Saudi Arabia. Their posts range across a wide selection of industries and sectors taking in banking and finance, law, hotel management, media, tourism, the automotive industry, politics, government and retail. And we are proud to report that our register of PTY partners boasts a large contingent of blue chip corporations and world-class institutions including such prestigious names as Samsung, American Express, Nestle, The Bank of England, Hilton Hotels, Porsche, Warner Brothers, HM Treasury, New York City Council, JP Morgan, the United Nations, The Savoy Group and IBM.
To discover just how professional placements can impact on future prospects, we recently caught up with one of our students who already has the Emerald City in her sights. As a result of her PTY, Business and Retail Management Student Olivia Cameron - our very own ‘Dorothy’ – gained not only valuable experience but also the offer of a place on a retail giant’s management programme after graduation.
We join Olivia as she dons a very special pair of red shoes and sets out on her professional training year at Marks & Spencer…
