Leagan Gaeilge   Text Version   Display: Zoom (-) (+)   View ( Normal High contrast ) Printer Friendly  A to Z  Sitemap

gy206 b.sc. in Business Information Systems

Work Placement gets you ready 

Starting in January of your third year, you undertake a paid work placement in industry for 6 to 9 months*, which gives you the opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills in a real business environment. This work placement, called the Professional Experience Programme, is of tremendous benefit to Business Information Systems students, in many different ways.

The work placement allows you to see the relevance of what you have studied in a practical context and it helps you to embed and extend your technical skills. Work experience is also lots of fun, exciting and challenging, giving you a major opportunity to put your academic knowledge into practice and develop new technical and business skills. The theory learned in the classroom and the reality of the world of work can seem at times to be miles apart. Work placement provides the opportunity to bridge this gap.

 

3rd year students Jack Melia, Lorraine Dillane and Robert Watson on placement in Intel March 2009

Work placement gives you confidence in your own ability to work in a professional environment and helps you to develop key personal skills, particularly your communication, productivity and teamwork skills. You learn at first hand about work ethics and confidentiality and about the meaning of responsibility. What you learn on your work placement may also enrich the final year of your studies. The work placement helps some students to see the importance of achieving a good degree and acts as a motivating factor in their final year studies; it gives others increased confidence approaching final year exams while it gives still others a better understanding of some of the theoretical issues covered in the classroom.

Such experience greatly enhances your employment prospects – with a good work placement record, you will not find it hard to secure graduate job interviews. The work placement is your first introduction to a potential employer. It also helps you to decide the type of career to pursue and the type of organisation in which you wish to work.

The J. E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics has a broad network of relationships with companies in many sectors, including investment banks, healthcare companies, IT and business consultancies and technology companies. Using these links and working through the NUI Galway Placement Office, we help you as much as we can to secure a placement. Sometimes, students organise their own work placements.

All placements are salaried. Students are sometimes offered permanent positions with their placement company and start immediately after graduation. There is also potential to develop a collaboration with your placement company for your final year project.

2009 placement companies include:

• Intel
• Microsoft
• ESB
• AIB
• Lionbridge Technologies
• Boston Scientific 

* Note: Placements are awarded on a competitive basis involving a standard job application and interview process. The NUI Galway placement office source placement opportunities and facilitate BIS students throughout the placement process. To date the placement office have always managed to secure more placement opportunities than the number of BIS students available to take up those offers. However, it is the responsibility of the individual student to secure the actual offer of a placement by impressing at both the application and interview stages. Students should expect to be in competition with other students from both NUI Galway and elsewhere. Companies will always employ the best qualified candidate so it is imperative that students maintain a strong academic record from the start of the programme in order to maximise their placement opportunities.  In situations where a student does not secure a paid placement they will be required to achieve the same learning outcomes by undertaking a voluntary placement for a shorter period of time.

    

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility