ABSTRACT
My role as work placement manager at University College Cork (UCC) tasks me to ‘assist students to obtain a work placement in industry’. Both student and employer expectations have moved on considerably with relation to the professionalisation of the recruitment process and the ‘readiness’ of students to enter the work placement environment. The world of the twenty-first-century worker is a challenging, fast-aced learning environment where employers expect workers to bring a developing set of competencies and strengths with them to be further enhanced and developed as they grow in the organisation. Employers expect the same of work placement students, as placements have become a feeder pool for graduate recruitment. Some employers seek to convert over 70 per cent of their placement students to graduate hires. In this highly competitive context, I struggled with the organic nature of pre-placement preparation content.
