Engineering placement

I did my placement back in 1996 and got paid something less than 10k to live in London as a Chemical Engineer.
I had pretty much no student debt till i did my placement then I racked up quite a bit, lived in a total dump and had everything I owned stolen and a brick thrown through my car window while I was driving down the road. You could say I hated allot of my time there.

HOWEVER

My 14 months down there basically kicked off my whole career because once I graduated I got a pretty decent job on a decent wage almost purely based on my placement experience, and the rest as they say is history.

You have to remember when you graduate hundreds of people will be looking for the same jobs that you are so you need something to differentiate you form the masses, and in a group of people with no experience 1 year with a company is a big up.

As corny as it is the cliché “In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king” is very true in this case.
 
What you're being paid there is your tax-free allowance across two financial years. It's a rather old way of doing it but you'll see all of that in the bank and pay no income tax.

My first placement in '96 did that at about £8.5K, then my second placement in '99 paid me £13K

Something to think about is the recession because businesses are still struggling and hardly recruiting. If you don't take this placement thre might not be another one just round the corner...

A couple of people in this thread are being a bit snooty in my opinion and not seeing the wider picture, as pointed out by House.
 
Thats about what I got when I did a placement in 2007. Seems that was the going rate as well.

I had lived on 5K a year from student loans so anything above that was a bonus in my books! I actually had quite a good year, although its not a lot of money because I was surrounded by students I felt like a millionaire! Was able to treat myself much more than I had been able to in the past, bough a couple of 22" monitors, a DSLR, went to Kenya and a few other little bits here and there.

When I was applying for my placement there were many more students than there were positions so once you got one, you dont complain about the wage/hours/workload.

In summary, stop complaining, it's not your 'first proper job' it's a placement year!
 
ajgoodfellow said:
I stand corrected. I had Electronic Engineering in mind and my personal experience - looks like Chemical Engineering is better paid, especially in the oil industry!
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Your quite right, the oil industry is a slight exception and pays above average because it has/had the most money and wants to recruit the best - hence the high(ish) placement salaries. Chemical Engineering on the whole is paid better than average so my view point is probably skewed a little.

As other people have said placement years are mainly about gaining quality experience in the relevant field and finding out whether the industry you want to go into is right for you.
 
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I just rang them up and they said it was the going rate and they thought it was a fair pay even when I said that I talked to my careers adviser who said it was well below the normal amount.. so I'm now thinking either

A) They're ripping me off
B) It's the right pay as its not a great job so I won't gain a lot of experience from it..

I now have to completely reconsidering my options and think about what I'm gonna do, but I've finally got the cast off my broken foot today so things are getting better :D but thanks for all your help, nice to hear what everyone else's experiences of placement were!
 
As I am looking for an Industrial Placement at the moment (Software Development/Engineering) a lot of the jobs are offering around 12k. I know its not the same field but can see why they may think it's the going rate.
 
I was on a £19.5k architectural placement last year. This year, the same placement has dropped to £12k. You've just graduated at a bad time unfortunately, I'm lucky as I'm now back in uni and hopefully it will all have passed over when I'm out again!
 
I'd say thats pretty low tbh. I'm on 16k in Brizzle and that was on the lower side of my offers.

Depends how important the experience is to you, and what other offers you have on the table? I must say, I would probably struggle on 11k pa, I certainly wouldn't have enough to save anything worthwhile.
 
There's a scholarship that was just announced last week, 3 places for Meng only students which out of the 14 Meng in my year only a max of 2 others would be competing against me as either they have a placement or don't do electrical modules anymore, although its open to all years but mightn't be as much attraction if they don't need a placement yet but its advertised as 20k plus in sponsorship (ie placement year, summer work, paying for fees etc) so looking at that but due to timing I can't wait to hear from them before deciding fully on this current offer

or else theres only 1 other opportunity which deadline closed last friday but they extended their previous deadline by 2 weeks and I doubt they have too many applications as again its electrical and isn't as popular a career path as electronic
 
House said:
I did my placement back in 1996 and got paid something less than 10k to live in London as a Chemical Engineer.
I had pretty much no student debt till i did my placement then I racked up quite a bit, lived in a total dump and had everything I owned stolen and a brick thrown through my car window while I was driving down the road. You could say I hated allot of my time there.

HOWEVER

My 14 months down there basically kicked off my whole career because once I graduated I got a pretty decent job on a decent wage almost purely based on my placement experience, and the rest as they say is history.

You have to remember when you graduate hundreds of people will be looking for the same jobs that you are so you need something to differentiate you form the masses, and in a group of people with no experience 1 year with a company is a big up.

As corny as it is the cliché “In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king” is very true in this case.
Click to expand...

Dragging this thread up from the depths.....but out of interest what was your first graduate job? Did you stay in the chemical engineering field/industry?
 
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