Top 10 reasons why your business should become a host company

1. We are a small, non profit company that provides personalised services.

We care for both students and companies that work with us. What this means is, that we will not place anyone in your company, who does not meet the criteria and lacks relevant skills and knowledge. The students have weekly feedback meetings in our office, which means we are always up to date.  

2. The service is free of charge to your business.

It simply cost you nothing to have one of our students helping you. The participants receive their funding through European Commissions funds for educational projects like Erasmus+. 

3. Universities from across Europe contact us to organise work placements for some of their top students. 

The participants go through a complex application process and interviews in order to select the right and motivated candidates.

4. Having one of our students means there is extra help on hand. 

Yes they will need help and training from your existing team, but they are willing to learn and motivated.This is a fantastic opportunity for them to see how English firms operate and they would love to learn from you. The students can prove to be a very valuable help to your business during busy times and can fulfil simple tasks as well as be given more ambitious projects to accomplish.

5. Expand your business.

Have you ever thought about expanding and marketing your services to other EU countries?  Having one of our students as a part of your marketing team can help you with that. After all, they are the market experts on their own countries and can help your team gather relevant contacts or help with choosing the most suitable marketing strategies. 

6. We are flexible

We ask for all students to work 35hrs per week. We do understand however, that this is not always possible. The participants do not have to stay in the office for the whole time. They can accompany you to relevant meetings (networking, business, meeting suppliers, clients etc.) or be assigned personal projects to accomplish at home or in field ( market research, web design, database analysis etc.) 

7. You are the boss.

We will contact you if we have a student who we believe could benefit from a placement with you and contribute to your company's progress. You will be sent a CV and we will also inform you of any relevant information gathered during the Skype interview. After this you decide. You are also responsible for the job description and deciding on how much independence you will give to the student. This can change in time and you might feel like increasing their responsibilities after the initial training, it is all up to you.

8. We want to hear from you.   

The students have weekly feedback meetings in our office, which means we are always up to date on how are they doing. Equally, we are very interested to know how are you finding it? What is your opinion on the student's work? Are there any problems? Do you have any questions about the placement? We are available to talk Monday to Friday 8am-5pm, so you can pop in, give our office a call or email us, it's up to you.

9. The length of work placements varies as does the type and age of students we host in Plymouth.  

We work on various European projects. Our students usually come for anything between 2 weeks and 6 months thought the whole year. They can be in Vocational Training, University under graduates, post graduates, graduates, mature students, people currently seeking employment or trying to return to employment after a long period of time. Their age is usually between 18 and 55 and experience can vary.

10. If you are interested, please ask.

Good quality host companies are something, we always seek. If you already had a browse through our website but think we don't deal with the areas of work that you provide, please get in touch. We receive many requests daily from keen partners for different work placements. Some of them are quite flexible positions, others in specific areas of study like laboratory analyst , technicians, microbiologists, electricians, mechanical engineers and many more. 

For more information about our services, please visit www.almondvoclink.co.uk

"My personal experience in Plymouth" by Emilie

One of our students from Belgium, decided to write a few paragraphs about her experience in Plymouth. We were lucky enough to work with Emilie as she undertook her work placement with Almond Vocational Link in February 2014. It was a pleasure to work with this bright young lady and we wish her all the best in her future professional career.

Here is what Emilie had to say:

Emilie (far right) taking part in Language Cafe activities

My personal experience in Plymouth

 

My name is Emilie and I’m in my final year of studying to become a management assistant. I am from Libramont, a little town in the south of Belgium. To complete my studies, I decided to undertake training abroad. Other students from my school came to UK before and said they had good time. I decided to come to Plymouth with two friends, Fabienne and Virginie. We arrived here on 1st February 2014.

The beginning was rather difficult. I didn't know anything about this city, I didn't know if I would like it, if I would have fun, if my work placement would be nice... I just wanted to come back home, but after three or four days, everything was fine.

I came here for a work placement (as a student) at Almond Vocational Link Ltd. I found it a nice place to work. The people are very patient, smiling. During my work placement, I had the opportunity to improve my own skills (translation, page layout, letter writing) but also the opportunity to develop new skills I hadn't before like marketing, database, research.

Little by little, I discovered the lovely city of Plymouth. This city is a paradise for those who love shopping. The most amazing, for me, was the cosmetics. Anything you could dream, you have it. In the centre, you can find a lot of wonderful and amazing shops that don’t exist in Belgium. My favourite are Boots and Superdrug. Plymouth is also perfect for those who love going out late. In the city, you can find a lot of casino’s, night clubs, cafe’s, bars.

Everything here is very easy to find. Wherever you live around Plymouth, you have buses to go to the city centre every few minutes, even on Sundays! You just have to go to Royal Parade and then, everything is here: shops, nightclubs, restaurants... Whatever you want, you have it around Royal Parade!

My country is known to be the Chocolate’s Country but England is a chocolate’s country too! There are so many kinds of chocolate products that one month is not enough to taste all of them. Nevertheless, there are also a lot of other food products that you can’t find in Belgium and it’s just fun to taste them.

I really enjoyed my stay here. One month is a bit too short if you want to enjoy everything that Plymouth can offer you, but it was really nice to come here. People are very kind and helpful. They won’t blame you if you don’t understand what they say or if you don’t speak English very well. They have great qualities that a lot of people from big cities don’t have. All of this, is what makes Plymouth  amazing!

Emilie receiving her certificate from Janet