Development Engineer Review

I thoroughly enjoyed the placement. Everyone was very helpful and a pleasure to work with. You are involved and relied upon to produce important work that is current and world leading in innovations.

The most important thing is nobody ever treated me like an intern. From day one you are fully immersed as a member of the team. During my time I was invited out to meals with the team and regularly enjoyed cycling with other members (including managers) from the department in an informal manner. Advice and help was always offered when you needed it.

Opportunities for training were cascaded from managment and they were very encouraging about allowing you to attend courses. Day to day advice and support on tasks from my manager and supevisor was always available as well as from other experienced members of the team.

Initially I could have hda more work to do but when I asked for more I got it. It's abot finding a balance and regular feedback sessions with my supevisor helped acheive this. If your workload was ever too great your manager would give you advice on making priority calls or helping to offload the work if necessary.

I was given a lot of responsibility vrey early on and in the final months of my placement I felt like a full member of staff with the responsibilities that had been given to me.

My report writing and how to structure reports has improved greatly but the greatest development has been in my presonal management of my time and workload.

The office was lively and had a very positive atmosphere.

All IT equipment was ready on the first days and safety shoes had been ordered in by the end of the first week (spares are available if requried before receiving your own). There was some delay in aquiring some specific software required in my department. Though this is probably due to the numbre of new starter requests in the initial weeks.

Initial training sessions for local processes and software used were mandatory and set-up early on for all new starters. Company managers are vrey willing to allow you to attend courses as part of your own indiviual development plan.

I've secured a furthre summer placement with the company before my final year of university. After that I intend to apply for the Graduat Scheme.

There was a social organisation set-up for interns and graduates that you were able to join but I wasn't involved in this myself. The social scene between colleagues in the team was good and ranged from grabbing a burger at lunch to going on cycle rides after work. It allowed me to interact with different levels of management in a more relaxed environment were I could benefit from discussing their experiences within the company as many had started as interns originally.

Derby housing and social life is very well priced with good and fair priced links to places like Nottingham and Birmingham.

Nightlife isn't something I particularly concern myself with but from talking to other interns I was living with they said it was very good and seemed to be very happy with their night when they returned. Equally there are opportunities to go out in Nottingham and Birmingham which are a short ride on a bus or train.

Rolls-Royce has it's own gym (open to te public as well) which has no joining fee for employees. There are also several clubs and societies within the company and you can usually find colleagues willing to do things out of work as well.