Students from the University’s Business School have the opportunity to taste the real world through a one-year work placement scheme.

One student, David Steele, is now finishing his Business Studies degree after completing his own work placement.

Working with Ellel Ministries Pierrepont as a marketing assistant, he was able to learn new things and enjoy some memorable experiences.

He said: “My work placement was definitely the best part of my degree. It gave me the opportunity to get out of the lecture theatre and apply all that I had learned.

“It took me a month or two to really settle into the organisation and find my place, but before long I was flying! I was given responsibility for projects that I really enjoyed and the other staff were really great to work with.”

David was involved in various marketing activities and said: “I was doing all aspects of marketing, but my main focus was online marketing, something I had not learned much about during the first two years of my degree.

“My manager was fantastic and he taught me loads of valuable things which I could only have learned in a real-life working environment.

“We launched a brand new website for the training school that the organisation runs and my main job was to drive traffic to the new website. I had to learn lots of new skills and within six months I had increased traffic to the website by more than 600 per cent which was an incredible achievement!

“Apart from the online marketing, I had opportunities to present a marketing plan to the board of directors and was given the chance to do a 10-minute speech in front of more than 200 people at a conference which has given me a lot of confidence in public speaking.”

With his confidence boosted, David is looking positively to the future and said: “My work placement was such a success that I am still working part-time for the organisation and have a job offer for when I graduate which I will be taking up.

“I fully recommend doing a work placement – I didn’t realise how beneficial it had been until I came back to University for my final year and realised how much I had developed.”