UWE Graduate Internship Scheme

The scheme was launched to support the local economy by helping business to employ and train quality graduates. This helps:

• Improve the employment prospects of graduates by developing relevant knowledge and experience.
• Allow businesses to afford extra staff resources in order to undertake tasks/projects.
• Develop the skills pool of existing staff by allowing them to mentor and supervise graduate interns.

All business sectors are eligible, although internships must be either project based or add value to the graduates CV, and incorporate an element of training or mentoring.

Recent interns have previously worked on projects within the following areas: Administration, Accountancy, Finance, Editorial, Engineering, Hospitality, Human Resources, IT, Journalism, Legal services, Marketing, Advertising, PR, Media, TV, Film, Radio, Project Management, Publishing, Scientific.

See our ‘Project Brief for Employers’ for further information on how your internship can enhance a recent graduate’s employment prospects by building on their skills, knowledge and confidence.

• Internships can take place anywhere in the UK
• Your intern must be a UWE graduate from 2011
• You can nominate an eligible graduate who has contacted you speculatively
• You cannot nominate someone who is already working for you
• You cannot recruit a graduate who has previously undertaken a UWE funded internship within your organisation

The project should give the graduate some insight into the company, industry and profession as well as developing their skills and confidence in some way. Activities may include shadowing staff, contributing to routine administrative tasks or attending meetings.

High quality work experience can include drafting documents, research, analysis of data, attending meetings as an observer, assisting on a current team project, administrative tasks, participating in training exercises and engaging with different team members about their job/career. It will be particularly beneficial if the graduate has a key task to prepare by end of the internship ie a presentation or a report.

The recruitment processes is up to you - but ensure you are happy that the candidate you have selected is on board with your aims, and you both are happy with what is expected of each other by the end of the project.

Graduates should be given a short induction to cover general information about the company (including normal working hours, dress code, travel arrangements, parking, lunch facilities), who they will be reporting to, what is expected of them in terms of project aims, how the project will be structured, the team they will be working with, how to report absence and any other pertinent information.

Ensure that any graduate intern is fully briefed about health and safety procedures especially for fire evacuation and reporting incidents.

Whilst we are always available to offer support to our graduates it might be worth allocating a particular person to support your graduate intern. You should consider how they will be inducted, trained and mentored and how this will help to develop your current staff’s skills as well as the graduate intern’s skills.

Providing feedback is essential to any graduates development; assessing skills developed, strengths, areas for further development and advice on the industry/current market will be invaluable to their career progression and this is the fundamental aim of this scheme.

Appraisals or feedback should certainly happen at the end of the placement but it could be useful to meet half-way through the project to allow the graduate to put the feedback into practice. Constructive and positive feedback on tasks, which particularly highlight skills and competencies involved as well as assessing to what extent project objectives have been achieved will also benefit your staff and your business.

Towards the end of the internship we will send out a survey for both yourselves and the intern to complete – it is essential for us to gather this information in order to make improvements to the scheme and we thank you in advance for taking the time to complete this.

• Funding to businesses is £1000 (inclusive of VAT if charged) per intern.
• Internships must be for a minimum of 8 weeks if full-time; part-time opportunities are also an option on a pro-rata basis.
• Graduates musts be paid a minimum of £250 per week if full time (pro-rata part time).
• You must be able to pay interns PAYE.
• Costs to business will be a minimum of £1000 plus employer National Insurance contributions and VAT if charged.
• There will be no limit to the number of vacancies you can advertise however funds will only be released upon successful appointment of an eligible UWE graduate and receipt of contract.
• Graduates can only be funded once ie we are not able to fund the same intern twice for the same organisation.

If you would like to submit a vacancy, please either log-in or register with UWE CareerHub.

UWE CareerHub allows you to manage all your vacancies and events as well as offering increased promotional opportunities to our students, staff and graduates.

Once registered and approved, you may advertise your vacancies:

• Just select the 'notify a vacancy' option on the left hand menu.
• Please ensure you include 'UWE Graduate Internships 2011-2012' in the job title.
• Select the 'Graduate Internships' criteria before submitting the internship.

Please note: registration on UWE CareerHub and advertising a position does not guarantee funding. Funding will only be allocated on receipt of contract for an eligible intern.

If you are interested in finding out more about how you can partner with UWE to offer a Graduate Internship, please e-mail careers@uwe.ac.uk or phone us on +44 (0)117 32 85353.