An undergraduate placement scheme is helping our business thrive

As one of the original team at my business, I can remember when we started out and were working an unhealthy number of hours to make the business successful. Three years in, and we were struggling to find good people to join us.

We had tried most recruitment models but so far none had worked for us. Then, in 2003, we were approached by a young lad, David Hickman, whose mother knew one of my fellow directors. David was at Aston University studying for a computer science degree. His course included a one-year placement in industry and his tutors asked if we would interview him to see if he could join us for a year.

This was the beginning of an undergraduate placement scheme at our customer relationship marketing and e-commerce software company.

To find candidates we advertise placements on websites at a number of UK universities as well as on the website Rate my Placement.

Interested students are asked to send us a CV and covering letter. Then, if selected, they take part in a telephone interview. If they make it through that stage, they are called in for a day of tests and interviews, after which we make our offers.

Each year, five to 10 undergraduates join our one-year placement programme. Computer science students work on software programming and software development projects, while business degree students join our sales and marketing departments.

This gives us a year to try them out. After their time with us, we generally recruit the majority as permanent staff after they have graduated. On placement with us, the annual salary is £15,000.

In the early years of running the scheme we had one or two placements that didn’t go to plan. This was mostly down to our lack of experience at spotting the personality traits and attitude needed for our placements. We found that these students didn’t enjoy the work and struggled to fit into the company – the problems were mostly down to them not being prepared for a work environment.

We talked through these problems with both the undergraduates concerned and their universities. We ended these placements slightly earlier than planned, agreeing with the university that it would have no negative impact on the students’ degrees.

The lessons we learned from those placements helped us improve our assessment process. Since then the undergraduates we’ve taken on have been a good fit with ProspectSoft.

Over the years we have had 102 people on placements join us and have employed nearly 60% of those in full-time positions. On average, they’ve gone on to spend another six years working with us.

We’ve helped 32 SMEs in the local area to start undergraduate placement programmes. I speak regularly about this at university events and also invite selected SMEs to sit in on and observe our recruitment assessment days.

To say that our placement programme is important would be a huge understatement. Out of our 51 staff, we have recruited 38 people via placement and they are filling roles throughout the business, including one who is now a director.

We spend about £20,000 a year in advertising and recruitment costs, in addition to my time and that of two admin staff. We run dedicated training courses for all our new placement recruits. We also give them appraisals every three months and liaise with their university tutors.

Without the placement programme the business would not have been half as successful.

Of course, we don’t expect to keep everyone forever. In fact, we encourage career progression beyond ProspectSoft for those that we can’t find senior roles for. We instil in all our people the fact that they have joined a special group and that their next career step should be worthy of their quality.

Stuart McLaren is the sales and marketing director at ProspectSoft.

Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.