1. What is Industrial Placement Program?

The industrial placement program, also known as a co-op program in North America, is a 48-week program that allows our year-three honor degree students to work full-time in companies as "interns." At the end of the placement period, the students will return to our Department to finish their final-year of studies.

2. What is the purpose of the program?

The main purpose is to provide a real-life working environment for our students to apply their knowledge and problem-solving skill to practical problems at work. The students are also expected to learn professionalism, and other nonIT skills, such as communication skills, interpersonal relationships, team work, and time management.

3. Who participate in the program?

Our students, of the BSc (Hons) in Computing, BSc(Hons) in Enterprise Information Systems and BSc (Hons) in Information Technology, are eligible to enroll in this program after successfully completing the second year of studies. The curricula of the BSc(Hons) programmes can be found from here. All private and public institutions, with appropriate positions in the computing or IT

4. Why should you participate?

There are many reasons why you should consider participating in this program as a placement company:

5. What kinds of skills do you expect from the students?

All our placement students would have completed the first two years of studies under the two aforementioned BAC(Hons) and BSc(Hons) programs. That is, they will have mastered programming concepts and skills (Java, C++, C, etc.), operating systems, internet programming, database, computer networking, software engineering, and human-computer interface design, etc.

6. What is expected from the placement companies?

Our main expectation from you is to provide our students with jobs commensurate with their training in Computing and Information Technology. Moreover, the employment period must be at least 48 weeks in order for the students to "pass" this placement subject.

During the placement training, our students are your company's employees. Therefore, supervising them is basically the same as for your other employees. The only difference is that academic staff members will also supervise the students' placement studies. The academic staff members will visit the students and their supervisors at work at least two times during the placement period to ensure that the students' progresses are satisfactory.

7. When will the students be available?

In principle, our students will be available immediately after completing their final examinations in the middle of May. We encourage both students and placement companies to start the placement as early as possible. On many occasions, placement companies and students mutually agreed to extend the placement period beyond 48 weeks. That is acceptable to us, provided that the extension will not run into the next academic year, which starts at the beginning of September.

8. Will the students return to their placement companies after graduation?

There is no guarantee that our students will return to their placement companies after graduation. But, in the past many of them were in fact hired back by their placement companies.

9. What is the first step in participating in the program?

Please return the placement student request form to us as soon as possible, if you would like to

10. What steps are involved in recruiting placement students?

Upon receiving your request form, we will disseminate your job description to our students, and the subsequent steps are as follows:

11. Are there any other similar programs in our University?

The University has been conducting a "Preferred Graduate" Development Program, which enables students to work for a company during summer breaks.

Our Department also welcomes summer employment opportunities for our first- and second-year degree students, and HD students. If interested, please contact Ms. Winifred Ng at 2766-7260 (email: cswng@comp.polyu.edu.hk)

12. For further inquiries:

Please contact Ms. Winifred Ng (email: cswng@comp.polyu.edu.hk).

13. A list of recent partner companies (in alphabetical order)