Work Placement in Mechanical Engineering and Production Technology

Person responsible for mechanical engineering and production technology work placement issues: head of degree programme Jussi Horelli, jussi.horelli@hamk.fi.

At HAMK, there is a digital career and recruitment service HAMK Talents. See work placement and project ads also from Yammer group Työpaikat ja projektit / tekniikka (FI/EN).

Work placement instructions:

• The extent of the Work placement is 30 credits so that one week of full-time work placement related to your field of study provides 1.5 credits. If working full-time, 30 credits are usually gained during 5 months of working.
• Work placement should be carried out at least in two parts. A minimum duration of a training period should be one month.
• Students should find a workplace themselves. Higher education institution will support and share information on placements.
• If the student does not have a regular work contract with the employer, a work placement agreement will be drawn up between the employer, the student and HAMK University of Applied Sciences before the placement begins. 
• You must write a report about every work placement period.
• Once your work placement period is over, you need to prepare a work placement report and submit it together with a letter of reference/testimonial to your work placement coordinator within one month after the work placement period.
• It is possible to use work completed before studies have started or during absence period as work placement. Students may apply to have their prior competence and learning recognised and accredited through the RPL procedure (fill in the RPL application in Pakki, see instructions). Attach a letter of reference/testimonial and a report to you RPL application.
• Note that if you get funding from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (in Finnish known as Kela), they observe your studies and do not take credits gained from the work done before the studies into consideration.

Work placement report

INSTRUCTIONS AND CONTENT OF A WORK PLACEMENT REPORT

The report should give the reader information about the knowledge and experience you have gathered during your work placement period as well as your own opinions about the following things (minimum):

The employer
– location 
– field, products, etc. 
– number of staff, turnover 
– the year of establishment 
– organisation 
– customers

Your own job
– work placement period 
– position in the organisation 
– orientation to the work and the company to the trainee 
– tasks and working methods (independent / team work) 
– used equipment, machines, software etc.

Other things at the company
– safety at work 
– trade unions 
– leisure activities 
– training

Experiences of work placement period
– did you enjoy it? 
– was the job suitable for work placement? 
– how diversified was your job? 
– did the work placement influence your opinions about your field?

Make notes already during the work placement period. It makes the writing of the report easier.

Write your report as a normal document with a word processing program. The first page is the cover page, the second page is the table of context, then the following pages are the report itself. You can use the thesis template (remove summary pages). The minimum length of the text is 3 pages. Return your report to the contact person in work placement matters. 

Contact person in work placement matters in mechanical engineering and production technology

Head of Degree Programme Jussi Horelli, jussi.horelli@hamk.fi

Work placement documents

See work placement guidelines and work placement agreement (that needs to be completed if the student does not have a regular work agreement with the workplace) at HAMK general work placement website.