Topic: Work experience
Company name: IBM UK Ltd
Scheme partner: National Council for Work Experience (NCWE)

About NCWE
The National Council for Work Experience is part of HECSU, the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. It promotes, supports and develops quality work experience for the benefit of students, organisations and the economy.

About IBM
IBM is one of the world’s largest computer technology and consultancy companies. The company runs a work experience programme called Extreme Blue for talented students in their penultimate year of study of scientific or business degrees.

Total number of employees
370,000.

Operational countries
Over 170 countries worldwide.

Challenge
Often work experience is marred with images of tea-making and filing, but this is not the case with modern work experience programmes. Employers today face the challenge of implementing and maintaining a quality programme that benefits both the company and the individual. Structured programmes can enable companies to complete projects, recruit new employees and allow the student invaluable work place experience.

Project name
Extreme Blue.

Project manager
Matt Whitbourne, Extreme Blue programme manager.

Responsibilities
Manages Extreme Blue’s UK programme. He also takes responsibility for the overall European work experience programme.

Length of scheme
IBM has offered this work experience programme for 10 years, worldwide.

Work experience structure
• Extreme Blue is IBM's summer internship programme which combines top undergraduate technical and business talent to develop and commercialise emerging technologies from IBM's internal portfolios.

• Student teams work for twelve weeks in an intense incubator-like environment to create business plans and prototypes which address existing market challenges that are then showcased to IBM's senior executives, business partners, and clients.

• The programme culminates with a European Expo where students will have the opportunity to present their work to senior IBMers and meet students from other Extreme Blue labs.

Benefits
• As all of the students work on real projects, the Extreme Blue Programme provides lasting benefits to both the company and the individual.

• The placement student brings with them fresh ideas and new perspectives that enable the company to drive forward and start up new projects using work-experience projects as a platform.

• A placement at IBM allows students to showcase what they can do and demonstrate their innovative ideas.

• In addition to this students often finish the programme with their own software patents to their name and opportunities for future employment.

Results
• Last year one Extreme Blue Project: ‘Say it, Sign it’ (SiSi), received media coverage and company awareness for IBM.

• SiSi automatically converts the spoken word into British Sign Language, which is then signed by an animated character on screen.

• This kind of innovative programme allows IBM to maintain a presence in the consumer’s home and ensures the company message is still in the public domain.

• Other projects from 2007 are being developed to be integrated into new IBM technology offerings that the company hopes to see on the market in the future.

• Many of the work experience students also go on to become full-time employees at IBM, using the Extreme Blue experience as a spring board to a fruitful career at IBM.

• IBM UK were finalists in ‘Over 250 Employees – Up to 3 Months’ category at the 2008 NCWE Awards.

Lessons
• It’s important to implement a tailored induction process so that skills necessary to the company are highlighted and developed.

• IBM realised very early on that it was necessary to use the same assessment criteria as with the graduates, often placement students would stay on and so it is important that they have a real flavour of the company works and what is expected of them from the beginning.

Future plans
• IBM hope in the future to offer the opportunity for work experience students to exchange with foreign counter-parts from international offices, enabling them to work in one of the European or US offices for a period of their placement.

Key tips

1. Understand the nature of the people applying for the programme. It’s important to students that they find a job that they can be passionate about; the company must understand this and present their company appropriately through the work experience programme.

2. Create the right balance for the company and the individual – make sure there is enough scope for the student to show what they can do, but the company must also demonstrate what they are offering.

3. Make the students feel valued so that they learn something from the experience. This can be achieved by providing real work that gives the student a sense of responsibility and place within the company.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The National Council for Work Experience is part of HECSU, the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. It promotes, supports and develops quality work experience for the benefit of students, organisations and the economy. Its role includes disseminating information and good practice, encouraging the development of quality standards and encouraging more employers to provide placement opportunities. NCWE run an annual awards scheme to encourage and reward organisations that display good practice in work experience.


National Council for Work Experience and the Quality Mark accreditation scheme:
T: 0161 277 5267
E: workexperience@prospects.ac.uk
www.work-experience.org


ADDRESS:

National Council for Work Experience
Prospects House
Booth Street
Manchester
M13 9EP