 Hello, my name is Duncan. I'm a lecturer here in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. And in this short video, I'm going to tell you about our industrial experience program, which is a key part of our undergraduate degree. The industrial experience program is a year-long program that students can optionally take, enables them to get some work experience before they graduate. So they graduate with a broader and deeper set of skills than might otherwise have been the case without. When you study at university, you're making a big investment in your future. Yes, you're studying a subject that you find interesting, but perhaps part of the reason that you're doing that is because you're also trying to improve your career prospects. Now, it used to be the case, perhaps in your parents' generation, that the way to get a good job was to go to a good university and get a good degree, and that was all you needed. Now, sadly, that's no longer the case. In order to get a good job, it's not enough just to have a degree. You also need to have some kind of experience and demonstrate something above and beyond what a degree provides on its own. So this is where our industrial experience program comes in. As I said, this is a year-long program. It's optional. It's something that students can opt onto and off of any time up until the end of their second year. Our students work for a wide range of companies from very small start-up companies right through to some of the largest and biggest tech companies out there in the UK and outside the UK as well. In the last academic year, we had over 100 students going out on placement, and they were doing stuff that was relevant to their degree program. So they were all doing a wide range of jobs, but they're all relevant and related to computer science or software engineering or whatever degree program they were doing. Now, in order to find a placement, we have a team of people, including myself, who help students find placements and encourage students to do so during their first and second years of study. And the reason we do that, as I've already said, is it strengthens students' employability because students who've done a placement year typically have a broader and deeper set of skills than a graduate without. During your placement year, you have a reduced tuition fees and you're paid a full salary. So you're not paying the full tuition fees for the year, but you are paid a full salary by your employer. As it stands at the moment, 96% of our graduates who are on the Industrial Experience program are in a professional or a managerial job six months after they graduate. So we think this is a good program. It's beneficial for students, it's beneficial for us because we graduate better students, and it's beneficial for employers because employers find that placement years are a very cost-effective way to hire new employees. Now as I've said, there's a wide range of places that students go on placement. Here's one example. This is Juliana, who is working as a software developer at CERN on her placement year. Now CERN is an interesting employer because they're perhaps more associated with physics, but it turns out that for every physicist working at CERN, there are 10 engineers, and many of those engineers are software and hardware engineers. Because in order for the physics to happen, in order for the physicists to do their experiments, they're aligned on a huge network of very complex machines and software that enable them to do their experiments and interpret their data. So Juliana was working at CERN, and we have students going to do placement years at CERN every year. But as I've said, there are lots of other places that students go. So this is Ben. Ben was working for NCC Group, which is a global cybersecurity company, and he actually went back to work for them when he graduated. Sarah here was working for Nant Health, a company working in the health information industry, so providing systems that enable doctors and clinicians and medics to do things with electronic health records and the like. And we've also got Kieran there at the bottom who is working for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Now some of the companies that students work for are perhaps the obvious ones, the big tech companies that you've heard of. So this is Todd, for example, who went to work at, who is now working at Google. We've had students go on to work for all the big technology companies, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. But there are also lots of other jobs as well. It's not just the big tech companies, but if big tech is what you want, that's certainly an option. Another example is Laura. Laura is now working at the BBC, having done a placement year at another employer, and she's worked on a range of different products and services provided by the BBC, including websites for the FIFA World Cup and the general election here in the UK. So where else do our students go? Well, you can see on this map here that's published at that link there is where students are going for their placements, but also where they go after they graduate. You can see that obviously the UK dominates, but because our students come from all over the world, the students are going on to graduate positions at a wide range of places all over the UK and all over Europe, all over the world. And one other thing to say about Manchester is that there's been significant growth in the last few years and the number of employers that are in Manchester looking for computer science graduates. So companies like ARM, for example, who designed chips that you'll find inside your mobile phone. Companies like Jaguar Land Rover, who are designing and building autonomous vehicles. There's GCHQ, recently moved up here to Manchester. There's booking.com, who work in the online retail space, but also lots of other companies like Disney Plus, which launched this year. A key part of their infrastructure was built and continues to be built here in Manchester. There's companies like Couchbase, Wakelit, Cubic Motion and BioRelate. So besides the big technology companies you might have heard of, there are lots of startup companies as well. And many of those are in Manchester. So if you'd like to stay in Manchester for your placement year, there are lots of options for you to do so. And many of the best relationships we have with employers aren't just with employees around the world, but they're with employers that are on our doorstep right here in Manchester. You can find out more about those employers if you follow that link there. Another thing to say about the University of Manchester, just to finish off, there's two things. The first is that the University of Manchester is the most targeted university by the UK's top 100 graduate employers according to the Times Survey and according to High Flyers, their Graduate Market Report published in 2020. What this means is that there are lots of top employers who visit the campus and are engaged with the university and students in various ways. So this gives you lots of opportunities to meet employers and find out what they have on offer and whether what they've got on offer is right for you or not. Another thing to say that is because the Industrial Experience Programme is a significant part of our undergraduate degree, we have lots of students here doing it and it's those students alongside staff like myself and other people in my team who can help you find a placement. Often the best person to talk to about a placement is somebody who's just come back from that company. So that network of contacts is something that you can take advantage of, whether it's the professional network or the student network, it's all part of something you can take advantage of while you're here at the University of Manchester. So I hope that gives you a flavor of some of the ways that our students make their way into employment after studying. To conclude, there's a range of services here that you can take advantage of while you're a student to make you give you a head start in your career. There are dedicated staff like myself who work in computer science, who work alongside the careers service, who are there to help you at every step of your way along your job search and your route into employment. There's also a significant community of students. So I mentioned at the beginning there that we have over 100 students on placement. And what we found is that having a large group of students on placements means they can help each other and advise each other on what the good and bad points about specific employers are or what specific interview questions are. So it's a classic case of it's not what you know, it's who you know. And those students are part of a larger alumni group. There are more than 10,000 people who graduated from the University of Manchester with some kind of computer science degree, whether it be bachelor's, master's or PhD. An alumni network is something again that you can plug into as a student here in Manchester. So I hope that gives you an idea of the stuff that we do here. If you have any questions as a Q&A session or you can post comments below. Thank you for listening.