Business Industry Placement (RBUS4999)

Course overview

This course aims to provide penultimate or final year students with the opportunity to apply conceptual knowledge to the real world via a professional placement. As such, this course strongly links discipline learnings, personal employability skills and attributes developed by students across the duration of their studies with the challenges and expectations of working in industry. In doing so, students have the opportunity to gain valuable work experience in their chosen profession and to connect this experience to the development of a workplace ready skill-set. Successful completion of the course will provide students with the employability skills required for transition to the world of work. Further information about how to apply for RBUS4999 can be found on the BEL Faculty's work-integrated learning website.

RBUS4999ﾠis a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) course that provides students with the opportunity to apply their conceptual knowledge to the real world via a professional placement or industry project. The placement allows you to integrate your theoretical and conceptual knowledge with the skills and problem-solving techniques required in the workplace. As such, the course is particularly focused on enabling you to develop your employability skills, gain knowledge,ﾠunderstand the attitudes of business professionals, grow your professional network, and engage with real world business issues.

What is employability?

The University of Queensland has an employability framework that focuses on four themes:ﾠ

• Awareness -ﾠunderstanding employability as both degree knowledge and the attributes that guide workplace performance;
• Experiences -ﾠengaging with a range of experiences to develop the skills and attributes for employability;
• Learning -ﾠuses self-reflection to translate experiences into employability development; and
• Transfer -ﾠcommunicating employability effectively in the recruitment process and transferring learning into workplace performance.

This means that during this course, you will have the opportunity to:ﾠ

• understand your skills, strengths and areas for development;
• work on specific projects in an organisation, and develop your role within thatﾠorganisation;
• work with a range of diverse people, andﾠassist others and teams with tasks;
• apply employability skills, and practice your skills to develop them further;
• reflect on the skills and qualities that enhance your employability; and
• develop a personal value proposition.

Why is Business Industry Placement Important?

Your employability and career success are important outcomes of your degree.ﾠThe Business Industry Placement aims to develop awareness of your employability strengths, development needs and how to create an action plan to strengthen these needs. Thus, it is structured to promote aﾠvaluable industry placement/project, real work experiences and assistﾠin bridging your transformation from student to reflective practitioner.ﾠ

Placement/Internshipﾠrequirements

You will need to undertake an industry work placement (internship) of 80 to 120 hours throughout (or before) the semester.ﾠYou should find your own work placement in a functional area of management practice in an organisation that is willing to host you and provide meaningful project work to further develop your skills and abilities.ﾠAs an example, you might choose to complete your internship in one block of 3 or 4 weeks full-time,ﾠ3 days a week over 4-5 weeks, orﾠ2 days a week over 7-8 weeks.ﾠCompleting one day a week of your internship hours isﾠnotﾠrecommended as experience has shown the likelihood of you being given realistic work tasks and/or being included in the work team is significantly reduced.ﾠIt is your responsibility toﾠnegotiate your working hours with your industry host, as well as manage your time effectively to attend all the scheduled learning activitiesﾠthroughout the semester.ﾠSupport is available from the BEL FacultyﾠEmployability Team to help you source an appropriate host organisation.

NOTE: Before you commence your internship, it is important you first refer to the BEL Work-integrated Learning (WIL) website to familiarise yourself with the process of having your internship approved before it can be considered suitable for course credit. Access the website using thisﾠLink. Your internship commencement date should be within 6 months of the start date of the semester in which you are eligible to complete your WIL course. If your internship commencement date is outside of this time period, you may be advised to source a new internship for your WIL course.