A no-brainer for SMEs

As students return to universities for the start of the next academic year, now is the time for employers to start touting for talent amongst the many thousands of sandwich course students who will be seeking employment during their work placement year in 2007. And yet, more often than not, it is the students themselves who find they have to directly approach potential employers to take them on.

That is according to Philip Burridge, director of Placement Solutions (www.placement-solutions.co.uk), a recruitment firm dedicated to serve the growing market for talented placement students. He wants to see more employers recognising what a huge, relatively untapped market of good business talent there is amongst sandwich students and trialling the scheme.

ìMany employers, particularly amongst the SME sector, are simply unaware of the benefits and value that the placement scheme can offer,î he says. ìAnd yet for many, it gives them the opportunity to benefit from having high calibre, enthusiastic business brains in their organisation at a very affordable level. Indeed I would argue that on a pound for pound basis, placement students can offer employers the greatest return in terms of staff costs.î

Placement students seek roles in a variety of disciplines, but typically these include accounting/finance, sales, marketing, HR, IT and general management.

For the past five years, London-based corporate restructuring firm, Menzies Corporate Restructuring, has employed placement students. ìPlacement students are intelligent, enthusiastic and keen to learn, and bring real value to our business during the year that they are with us,î comments Paul Williams, partner. ìIn fact, proof of this comes from the fact that many come back to join us after they have graduated on a permanent basis and so the placement scheme also gives us an extremely cost effective route into graduate recruitment.î