Placement Student Review

The placement was good fun, and I shall definitely look back on it with fond memories. Equally, I found it challenging being expected to hit the ground running into such a big organisation.

Very highly! I am still in contact with members of my team about the project that I worked on and it's nice to know how everything is progressing. Whilst on the placement they were also really helpful and friendly.

My manager cared a lot about my personal development, and was very keen to ensure that I got the most from the placement. Further to this, if I was struggling to complete a piece of work they would always ensure they found time to help me or in certain situations pointed me in the direction of someone who would be better suited to helping me.

This seemed to vary. Generally I would say that I was never bored as there was always something that needed doing. Due to the team's schedule, Friday and Monday were always the busiest days.

Far more than I ever expected to be. I genuinely feel like I was dealing with important business documents that were having a real positive impact on decisions and outcomes. It was really nice to feel valued!

(Probably the hardest question to answer! I study Mech Eng, and was placed in a Project Management team.) The skills that I gained will at some point will most definitely be helpful to me, helping to run a large scale project with a high budget and high manpower . Equally, at this stage of my development it did not really assist at all as there was no real engineering aspect. These will be 'skills for life', just not for a few years yet I expect!

Positives: The atmosphere in the office was really good. People were always willing to help where they could. Negatives: I was the youngest in my office by a fair way, it was a shame there were no Graduate Scheme employees in my office.

Overall on a HR side, it was incredibly well organised. They were comprehensive in there planning, and were helpful when it came to organising accommodation. Unfortunately the same can't really be said for my department who didn't really have a grasp of my skills set, so initially the placement was slow.

We were able to take on company training courses through the businesses online training system. Further to this we were also able to take advantage of the ELS (Employee learning scheme) which allowed me to complete a personal qualification! (CBT)

We've been advised that we will get offered a job once next year's grad scheme places has been ratified by HR. Still waiting to find out.

Amongst the fellow placement students; yes. This was because we were all living in a student halls block over the summer, so it was all self-organised. 9/10 Amongst my colleagues (in the office) it was pretty shocking, they did nothing at all outside of work. (In their defence as it was a project management role, a vast majority of the office were parents so they may not have had free time to spare.) 0/10 The Graduate Forum (a grad run, for grads society within JLR) did their best to organise events, though frankly these seemed superficial and didn't necessarily help to introduce grads/undergrads. 5/10

The only place that we could (realistically) live was in student halls in Coventry (nowhere else would do a 3 month tenancy). The cost of living in Coventry was reasonably cheap, though to commute to work from there took ~1 hour with traffic so this made travel costs expensive.

Quite frankly, Coventry was pretty shocking. The pubs were OK, but the nightclub (notice the lack of an s, it is intentional) was at best a 'provincial nightclub'. It would probably be best to avoid and maybe go to Leamington/Birmingham.

The Grad Forum (reference above) organised a few activities outside of work (Yoga, Ultimate Frisbee, Rounders) and there was also meant to be a work squash club, though they never organised anything in the three months I was there.