What is RIS

Yes! Every opportunity through the Reading Internship Scheme, both remote and office-based, will be paid £9.50 per hour. You may also be eligible for the RIS Top-Up! 

That depends on how long your internship is. If you’ve applied for a 4-week internship, you will be required to complete 140 hours. If you’ve applied for a 6 week internship, it is 210 hours. And for an 8-week one it is 280 hours.

If you are working full time, you would do 35 hours per week. If you are on a part-time internship during term time, you are only allowed to work up to 20 hours per week. The days and times you work is between you and your employer. 

The employers will only see your application after the closing date of the advert. So, if you’ve applied within a week and the advert is live for another 2 weeks the employer wouldn’t have seen your application yet – so don’t panic! Once an employer has shortlisted, you will receive a message from MJO to say whether you’ve been shortlisted or not. If you haven’t heard back, they’re likely still shortlisting.

No, RIS is an extracurricular work experience programme, which cannot be used towards any credit baring initiatives as part of your degree programme. The scheme is a great way for you to gain experience and also transferable skills which you will need for future employment. 

If you are an undergraduate (or have very recently graduated) from the University of Reading and are based in the UK at the time of the internship, you are eligible to apply to RIS vacancies. You can apply to any of the vacancies that you’re interested in, even if it’s not within your specific degree sector.

Yes - all interns must be based in the UK at the time of the internship.

All payments made to the interns are via the employer's UK payroll, which means UK income tax and National Insurance contributions are paid to the UK Government (if the relevant thresholds are met). If an individual were to be paid on a UK payroll whilst they are   working outside of the UK, it could mean that the relevant tax and social security contributions are not being paid to the country where the work is being completed. This could expose both the individual and the employer to risk in terms of potentially a substantial fine, which could be levied against the employer and the individual by HMRC on behalf of the other country’s tax authority. As tax legislation varies between different jurisdictions and the tax legislation itself may vary depending on an individual’s own circumstances we are not able to quantify this risk.
 
Large multinational organisations will often have international mobility teams and a number of foreign payrolls to facilitate individuals working in different countries. However for smaller organisations who participate in the Reading Internship Scheme the cost of placing one individual on a foreign payroll can run into thousands of pounds and unfortunately even requesting tax advice can cost hundreds of pounds. This unfortunately makes engaging a worker on a foreign payroll uneconomical. 

You can complete one internship on the Reading Internship Scheme per academic year. We operate the scheme this way to ensure that as many students as possible can access support through the scheme.

You can apply to as many internships as you like. However, you are only able to do one internship per academic year so if you have been offered two internships (or more!) you will have to pick the one you’d like to do and withdraw from the others.

Students working remotely will be working from the comfort of wherever they are. This means you do not need to worry about having to travel to complete your internship. The internships will still involve a project with regular catch ups with the team you are placed within, however these will all be done via call or message. 

Virtual internships are very different, however are still great experience as lots of organisations have an element of home working in their business as usual approach. There are countless resources online with tips for how to make the most of a remote internship.