Placement years
Gain real-world experience, develop your skills, and boost your employability.
What is a Placement year?
Explore work placements during your degree and gain real-world experience in a range of sectors. Most undergraduate courses now have the opportunity to add an an optional placement year as part of your degree programme.
A Placement year is:
- A year of work experience with an organisation, which is integrated into your course and included in your degree title.
- Self-sourced by students with support from the University
- Typically undertaken in your penultimate year of study and usually lasting at least approximately 38 weeks.
- Available to both home and international students
- Paid, in most instances
A placement year provides you the opportunity to learn from industry leaders and build transferable skills.
Where to get help - Social Sciences students
As a Social Sciences student you can access placement support all across the University including:
- Students can drop-in to Cornerstone Employability and Placements Hub from 10AM-3PM Weekdays
- Visit the weekly placement drop-in Tuesdays 11am-1pm in Cornerstone
- Book a 1:1 placement year appointment with our advisor Tracy
- Join our online Placement Community 'Sheffield Connect'- we’ll have discussion topics, post vacancies and share recruitment information
- Build your skills and experience, and meet professionals at one of our events. Look out for emails about these events.
Where to get help else where at the University:
- Students can access further support from The Careers and Employability Service.
- Visit the other hubs around the University campus
- Look on Career Connect for current vacancies
- How to set up a placement year once you have found a job?
Learn more about how placements work
Oakley Pendergest talks about her experience as the Assistant Brand Manager at Unilever
