Project Management Intern Review

I really enjoyed my placement year because I was given a lot of responsibility in projects happening on the site and I felt included as a regular member of the team. This is something that I wasn't really expecting when I first started due to the temporary nature of my work and the amount of experience that I had when starting.

I felt valued by my colleagues to a great extent because they expressed their opinions on my work with areas where I needed to improve and areas where I did well. We also socialised at both lunch times in work and outside of work hours. This made me feel like a permanent member of the team.

I had regular update meetings with my manager and other colleagues who provided me with both constructive feedback and areas that they think that I perform well in. This was really useful because it allowed me to pick out the areas which I needed to improve on and be able to find opportunities to develop these skills.

On a daily basis I was generally quite busy. However the work load did vary quite a bit due to the emergency nature of the business. This meant that there were some days that were extremely busy, but not unmanageable and there were also some days where I would have a bit more free time than on the average day. So overall the balance was good.

During my placement I was actually given quite a lot more responsibility that I thought. This was largely due to the nature of my job role, which was Project Management. Therefore I was the project manager for one of the improvement projects on the site which involved ensuring that the project was completed in a good timeframe and that everybody was on track with their relevant parts.

The skills that I have developed whilst on the placement have been a large benefit for assisting me with my degree studies and my own personal development goals because I have had to work in a fast business environment, which is something not gained solely through a degree course and I also had to complete my dissertation whilst on the placement and the project assigned to me was very good for this.

The general atmosphere in the office was quite good. This is largely because everyone got on with each other and enjoyed each others company. This made it a very welcoming environment for me to start work in. It was also quite quiet at times which allowed me to complete my work well because there were not too many distractions.

The overall work placement was very well set up. This was largely due to a good human resources (HR) manager who gave me many opportunities to develop on skills I was perhaps lacking in and a good manager who gave me projects which both developed my knowledge and allowed me to improve my professional skills.

In terms of personal training and development, the company invested in me to a great extent. This was largely due to the training that I received on the technical background to the equipment that we provide to customers and the varying resources available to me through the company to improve my skill set.

The future employment prospects at the company are quite high because there are several different routes back into the company such as graduate schemes which are rotation based. This makes it so you can get a well-rounded view on the business and improve your skills accordingly. There are also several other entry level jobs available.

The cost of living and socialising in the area that I worked was not very high due to the rental cost of an average house share being relatively low. The cost of food, drink and other social activities was around average for the UK. However there was not that much to do in the area, so in terms of train fare/petrol in order to socialise it was not too cheap.