Want to find out what a real job is like?
These opportunities will let you step into the workplace, meet friendly professionals, and see what different careers are really all about. It's a great way to build confidence, explore your interests, and get inspired about your future.
Short placement days - Shadowing days
County Hall: Property and assets
Find out what it takes to keep a busy workplace running, from preparing rooms to supporting day-to-day operations. Shadowing and supporting the facilities team - incoming post, room preparation.
County Hall: Customer Services
Get a feel for a fast-paced front desk and see how staff help residents every day. Shadowing and supporting the Customer Service Centre, including reception at County Hall.
Children's and Adult Services – Social Work practice learning
Discover how social work apprentices learn important skills to support Adults and children, young people, and families. Shadow a practice learning session with current social work apprentices, meet the apprentice cohort, hear about the opportunities available, and gain an insight into what a typical day looks like for a social work apprentice.
Longer placements for four plus weeks
Innovation Centre
At Innovate Oxfordshire, you'll get the chance to see how new ideas and technology can make a real difference in local government and public services. This placement will help you understand how teams work together to solve real problems, improve services, and support local communities.
You’ll take part in practical activities, learn about digital innovation and data, and see how the council works with universities, businesses, and other organisations to create better outcomes for residents.
Location: County Hall
Business Improvement Team
Join the Business Improvement Team and get a behind-the-scenes look at how the council makes services better for the people of Oxfordshire. During this placement, you'll help with real improvement projects by gathering information, supporting workshops, taking notes, mapping how processes work, creating simple documents or presentation slides, and researching how other councils do things.
You'll build confidence, learn how teams solve problems and make changes, and develop useful workplace skills such as organisation, communication, teamwork and taking responsibility for your own tasks.
Location: County Hall
Customer Service Centre
Get a real taste of working in a busy customer service team, where you’ll see how staff help residents, businesses and visitors across Oxfordshire by phone, email and face to face.
You’ll build confidence, learn how to communicate with different people, and develop useful skills in organisation, problem-solving, time management and customer service that can help you in any future career.
Location: County Hall
Community Support Service
In this role, you would help support adults to live full and meaningful lives by focusing on what matters most to them. You will see how staff work with people and their carers, helping them stay active, build confidence, make friendships, and feel part of their community through activities such as wellbeing groups, local events, volunteering, cooking, and arts and crafts.
This placement would give you an insight into how support services help people stay independent and live at home for longer.
Location: Day centres in Abingdon, Bicester, Headington and Witney
Property and Assets, Facilities Management – Engineering
Are you interested in finding out what it's like to work in engineering and help keep important council buildings running safely?
This placement is based within the Hard Facilities Management team in Property Services. You will get the chance to see how engineers help maintain council buildings, respond to repairs, check safety requirements and support improvements across different sites.
Location: Bicester
Commercial and Procurement
This placement in Commercial and Procurement at Oxfordshire County Council is all about understanding how important decisions are made and how services are delivered behind the scenes. It's designed to give you a supportive introduction to the world of work, while helping you build confidence and develop skills that will support your future.
During your placement, you'll spend time exploring how the Council buys the goods, services and works it needs to support local communities. You'll learn how commercial decisions are made, how contracts are managed, and how different teams work together to make sure services deliver value for residents.
You'll have the opportunity to get involved in a range of activities, which might include supporting research tasks, helping with project work, or learning how procurement processes work in practice. You'll also gain insight into areas such as market engagement, policy development and how sustainability and social value are considered in decision-making.
Museum Services – Woodstock and Standlake
Interested in museums, history, people, or creative activities? This work placement is a great chance to explore what it is like to work in a museum and discover the different roles that help bring local history and collections to life.
About the placement
You will spend time with Oxfordshire County Council’s Museum Service and get involved in a varied programme of activities. This could include supporting school and community activities, learning about marketing, helping develop family learning activities, and finding out how museum collections are cared for and shared with the public.
You will also have the opportunity to experience front-of-house customer service at The Oxfordshire Museum and The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, helping you build confidence and develop useful skills for the future.
This placement is initially for one week with the potential to be offered a further placement and/or a volunteering opportunity.
Facilities Helpdesk Work Placement
Are you interested in finding out what it is like to work in a busy helpdesk team? This 4-week placement will give you the chance to support a friendly team that helps keep council buildings running safely and smoothly.
The Helpdesk supports council services when they need repairs or maintenance carried out in buildings such as libraries, fire stations, offices and children’s homes. The team takes requests, records key information, checks how urgent the issue is, and assigns jobs to engineers or contractors.
What you will be doing
During the placement, you will learn how a helpdesk works and how requests are managed from start to finish. You may help with tasks such as:
- Answering or listening to calls from council staff who need help with building repairs or maintenance.
- Taking clear notes about what the issue is, where it is happening, and who has reported it.
- Logging requests on the helpdesk system with support from the team.
- Helping to decide whether a request is urgent or routine.
- Passing jobs to the right engineer, contractor or member of the team.
- Following up on jobs and checking whether updates are needed.
- Learning how to communicate clearly and professionally by phone and email.
Location: office-based Bicester