The Employer's View of Placement
Name		Nick Phillips
Current Position		Still doing GNVQ
Course		Advanced GNVQ in Information Technology
College		Farnham College
Student profile
Nick Phillips studies at Farnham College where he is in the second year of the Advanced IT GNVQ course. His placement was for two weeks at Consult Hyperion, a consultancy specialising in e-commerce. Consult Hyperion’s work involves visionary thinking about the future of e-commerce and the department where Nick was placed devises client strategies and prototypes.
Placement tasks
Nick’s major task was to review the company’s Future Lab website – a brand new demonstration site. He had to consider how the site would be viewed by customers and to produce a report including suggestions for change. He also undertook client research, helped in day to day tasks such as the installation of new equipment and did some web page design.
Relevance of GNVQ studies
Nick's placement supervisor was Analyst, Simon Collins. He commented particularly on: Written communication and presentation of ideas ‘Nick’s report was very well laid out and presented. He had thought through the ideas and took a methodical approach to their presentation.’ Working with others and using initiative ‘Nick was very capable of doing things by himself; at the same time, if he wasn’t sure how to solve a problem, he had the confidence to ask for help. He adapted well to our working environment.’ General IT knowledge ‘Our company does cutting edge work but it is based on basic principles. Nick had a generic understanding of what was going on and a good grasp of fundamentals which enabled him to adapt well to the tasks he was given.’ Enquiry and research ‘Nick showed very good research skills and was very pro-active. Given a task, Nick could mould that task to help us more.’
In summary
‘We have had other work placement students from school aged 15 or so, but recognise the value in having someone that little bit older. Nick knew how to help us and became a valuable member of the team.’