Don't you forget about (S)ME(s)

Rewind the clock 17 years and it is November 1995. The internet is available through 56k dial-up modems, social media does not exist and The Placement Officer is still at school. It was a big year for British music and it came to pass that on the first weekend of the month, I had tickets to go and see two of the biggest bands in the country. On the Saturday I went to watch Radiohead play at Brixton Academy and the following evening Oasis played at Earls Court. I’d delivered hundreds of papers to save up the money to afford the tickets, and painstakingly made tape compilations for my Walkman (no such thing as ipods back then) made up of tracks from Pablo Honey, The Bends, Definitely Maybe, What’s the Story, and b-sides. This was going to be the best weekend of my life, watching two of my favourite bands in the flesh.

Once the weekend had been and gone, there was a very clear winner about who I thought had been the best band. It wasn’t Radiohead, who to my surprise were a pretty sterile live act, and with an honourable exception of My Iron Lung (which produced glorious scenes of carnage) failed to create the sort of atmosphere that I had been expecting. However, it wasn’t Oasis either, who were incredibly dull and static. The fact that I subsequently went to see them play the following summer at Knebworth with 125000 other people remains one of life’s great mysteries, as I’ve no idea why I subjected myself to that for a second time. No, the best band I watched in that star-studded weekend were a little known group from America called Sparklehorse, one of the support acts, who blew away the more recognisable artists with consummate ease. Ever heard of them? Probably not!

You may be asking yourself why am I taking this nostalgic look at my musical past on a blog that is supposed to be about placements. Well, as much as it is fun to hark back to the mid-90s, my experience with Radiohead, Oasis and Sparklehorse provides quite a good analogy for students looking for placements, when comparing blue-chip companies with small or medium sized organisations. While the audience at the Radiohead and Oasis gigs will have been filled with people who will have spent the last 17 years telling people it was the best show ever, there will be others like me who will have felt underwhelmed by the experience and drawn towards the smaller bands. The same principles apply with placement employers. While lots of students will aspire to work for the bigger names in the industry, others may find that a smaller company offering placements may be more appealing.

An SME will offer a different placement experience, but no less valuable than what you will get from working for a better known organisation. While you're looking through the range of placement opportunities advertised by your university, Gradcracker, Rate My Placement or whoever, fight the urge to overlook the companies you are less familiar with and take the time to find out what they have to offer. Your placement officer should be able to help you with this, as they may have worked alongside the SMEs in previous years and know about the students from your course who have undertaken placements with them. Tap into this information source and you could unearth a hidden gem, a Sparklehorse that you may not have otherwise known existed.