Work Experience and Industry Placements

Work experience plays an essential role in developing the confidence of learners in the workplace and it is through the positive engagement of employers, offering work experience and industry placements, that our students are able to put their classroom-based learning into practice.

Work Experience

Could you be a work experience host?

Work experience is an important element of learning and development for students, one that contributes towards their future employment. After all, today’s work experience candidates are tomorrow’s employees. Work experience provides learners with a better understanding of the workplace, boosting their confidence, and allowing them to engage with their local business community in a positive way.

How can work experience benefit your business

It’s not just the work experience candidate that benefits from a positive placement – your business, your colleagues, the local community, and wider UK economy benefits as well. Work experience can:

• Provide a fresh and new perspective into your work practices especially with new technology and social media that some young people are more familiar with
• Develop supervisory, mentoring and managerial skills within your workforce
• Provide an opportunity to trial a candidate with the prospect of them going into full-time employment or an apprenticeship at a later date – saving on expensive recruitment fees
• Enhance your business’ reputation within the local community, helping to create a positive public profile
• Promote workforce diversity
• Support staff with outstanding or on-going projects

Industry Placements

What is an Industry Placement?

Industry placements play a big part in preparing young people for the world of work. It is a valuable addition to their learning programme and allows them to put theoretical skills into practice. For the employer, it is a great opportunity to bring in extra resource, fresh ideas and scout for future talent. 

What do Industry Placements entail?

Unlike work experience, students on industry placements stay within the business for longer than just 1 or 2 weeks. Students are expected to complete 315 hours during their placement, and this work is unpaid unless the employer would like to pay a wage or contribute toward travel expenses. 

When do Industry Placements take place?

Full-time courses at Cambridge Regional College are 3 days a week, leaving 2 days a week for industry placement. Students will only be expected to work at their placements during term time.

We appreciate that not all employers are able to provide 315 hours of placement opportunity over the academic year but are interested in working with Cambridge Regional College. We would love to hear from you!

We are always looking for industry experts to share their experiences with our students, either at the College, or better still, at your premises. It all helps to develop our learners’ employability skills, which in turn benefits business.

We work with employers who commit to shorter placements of a few hours or a couple of weeks.  Employers who have opportunities for one student, through to groups of students over fixed or flexible timescales.

Placements can be across various departments within your organisation and industry wide. We also welcome Taster Days, Guest Speakers, Masterclasses, Live Projects set and judged by local employers, and Placements leading to part/full time jobs.

Our employers are key to our future workforce and by providing a placement or working with CRC you are building the skills of the future. It will allow you to trial the abilities of a potential employee or apprentice and because Industry Placements are completely flexible, you can vary them to suit your particular business need.

We are seeking employers who can support CRC by providing Industry Placements or Work Experience opportunities for students in the following subject areas:

• Business
• Business & Law
• IT
• Media
• E-Sports
• Construction
• Engineering
• Hairdressing
• Beauty
• Professional Cookery

Helpful documents 

Contact us to find out more

For more information about hosting a student for an industry placement, please contact The Industry Placement Team on 01223 428880 or