Engineering Intern Review

I found my placement to be extremely worthwhile and I would definitely choose to do it again. GE is a great company to work for and the Lisburn site that I was at was particularly good as the people there were encouraging, very friendly and wanted you to succeed in your development.

I felt valued by many of my colleagues, GE encourage their employees to show appreciation and acknowledgement to colleagues when appropriate. They have a rewards scheme where employees can reward each other’s contributions and the personal development scheme where employees can give insight into their colleagues’ work approach. From these tools and my interaction with my peers I felt very valued.

In the beginning of my internship I was given a lot of support to ensure that everything was done right as I was finding my feet. As my internship progressed and my knowledge and capability increased, I was able to reduce the amount of support that I needed from my manager and other colleagues and work more independently.

During my placement I never was at a loss for something to do, I had a list of projects with some that were priority and when there was a lull in those I was able to work on projects that were less of a priority but were still important. This ensured that I always had something to do.

I was given a lot of responsibility during my placement; I oversaw projects that allowed the business to save money by putting them in a stronger position to negotiate with suppliers. I was asked to assist in training customer on a new software feature, and data analysis work that I did helped to decide whether a project would be implemented or not.

I think that my time spent on placement will be extremely beneficial to me when I return to do my final year at university. I intend to keep the discipline of regular working hours which will allow me time to relax in the evenings, something I was not very good at in my first 3 years. I will be able to apply my health and safety training during my project which will be an advantage over other students. The coding and Excel skills I have refined will be invaluable when doing my project.

I worked in an open office with fifty other engineers. The atmosphere was one of calm and laid back attitudes yet everyone was hard at work getting their tasks done. Everyone knew what they had to do and were happy to get on with it without needing to be prodded by their manager. The openness of the office and friendliness of the people mean that help was easy to get and I’ve not been refused help yet.

There wasn't a plan laid out from the beginning for the entire year, instead I picked up a project from the intern before me and was given responsibility over that. As the year progressed, other projects were assigned depending on your current work level and how well you could balance another project with your current work. I knew which projects were more of a priority so was able to maintain a good balance between all tasks.

I was involved in specific training such as EHS and compliance training but outside that included training from my manager and other colleagues in how to use specialised equipment that was relevant to my work. We were also given personal training from HR on company policies, presentation skills etc. We were also assigned mentors who we could go to for personal/technical advice relating to work.

A number of interns have come back and been offered full time positions within the company and have worked here for many years since. Our managers encourage us to keep in touch after our degree so that we can be made aware of any opportunities within the company, they may even create an opportunity to have us come back. Opportunities are not only limited to the site I was at but across the whole company as an internship spent in any sector of GE is valued across the business.

A number of events were held throughout the year to allow social interaction outside of the work place. This included the annual Christmas party, the family fun day where employees could bring their families along to interact with your colleagues. As part of our internship we were tasked with hosting a quiz night for the site and all these opportunities allowed us to get to know our team members better.

I lived in the Belfast and commuted into Lisburn for work very morning (20 min) car journey) so I can only give my opinion on Belfast. I lived in the student area which is reasonably inexpensive to live in and rent and groceries were competitively priced. As it was a student area it meant that socialising was very very cheap with many bars/clubs offering promos on their main nights and other times through the week.

Again I lived in Belfast and commuted out to Lisburn so was not familiar with the nightlife around GE. However, the nightlife in Belfast is very good and caters to all tastes and ages. The bars are generally fairly priced but there are areas like anywhere that will be more expensive than others.

For activities related to work yes, the site ran a scheme that encouraged a healthy lifestyle and so they ran events such as golfing days, fishing trips, cycling trips and a site walk of the local park. Outside of work there are many, many classes and activities being run through local churches, gyms, community centres etc. you can also get involved in charity work or any other form of activity you are interested in.