Global Supply Placement Review

I have really enjoyed my time here at Cummins, and highly recommend this company to future students looking for a placement. The mixture of external training, mentoring and on-the-job training has helped me develop my skills as well as a person. One of the highlights was the other placements, there was 30 of us at one plant, which really helped me to settle in and compare and contrast experiences with.

In some cases I felt extremely valued by my colleagues, when assisting on projects or day-to-day work my contribution was appreciated and thanked. Moreover, through one project my contribution was rewarded through vouchers. However, in other cases work completed (mostly admin related) and the time spent on tasks were not valued but expected.

The first 3 months were fantastic, I was provided with a 90 day plan to settle myself into the work & meet the whole team. Moreover, I was assigned a mentor during the first 9 months of my placement, which really benefitted me as I was provided with guidance & support which is what is required for someone who is new to the working world. But, due to changes within the company, I was assigned an external manger after the initial 3 months which does not work. Please avoided this if possible, there was little personal development & interaction with this management type.

Within my role I was extremely busy on a daily basis, but my work plan was managed well so that was not over worked, working the core hours, only completing overtime when necessary. There were plenty of opportunities and projects to get involved with, however my role was heavily based around admin, and if I were to complete this placement again I would change my work plan to encourage more project work. Moreover, there were plenty of opportunities to complete Corporate and Social Responsibility if required.

There was high responsibility within my placement as I was working with many external contacts and managing changed to the products. There were approval stages within the processes & occasional reviews to ensure that processes were controlled effectively. I personally preferred the high responsibility as I found this challenging and worked well with my strengths.

During my placement I completed external training on; adapting to a professional business environment, effective communication and presentation skills, team work & customer care. But, the most beneficial development was completing Strengths Finder 2.0 for a quarterly meeting - this is an online questionnaire used to find your 5 main strengths - This really helped me understand my work ethic and I adapted my processes to utilise my strengths. Learning about these skills and strengths have improved my current work and will undoubtedly improve my future university work and upcoming career.

My office, compared to others, was extremely quiet due to a small amount of people. This was not a bad thing as personally I prefer to work in quiet areas. Although, everyone within the office was happy, friendly & funny with good banter throughout my placement. Half-way through my placement there were redundancies within the company which severely affected plant and team moral.

Placements within Cummins & the plant I was based in have been happening for many years and were very well organised. I was the fourth placement in my role, so the work was well structured as well as the on boarding into the company. A Facebook page & welcome day for all placements to meet were extremely helpful and enjoyable – helping me settle in to the new company.

There was external training on; adapting to a professional business environment, effective communication and presentation skills, team work & customer care. Other than that it was very much on-the-job training, occasional managerial development & mentoring.

During my placement there were redundancies within the company, with the graduate role that would be my natural progression within the company being made redundant after 3 months. Obviously the way that this graduate was treated has put me off applying to this segment of Cummins. I would, however, be interested in applying to other, more successful, segments for future graduate roles as I believe these will be more stable.

Amazing social scene amongst the placements, limited amongst colleagues. However, later on in the year the social scene does die down a bit – before picking up towards the end. I have made some fantastic friends on my placement that I will keep in touch with for many years to come.

Low cost housing around the Thanet area, would have preferred to be based around Canterbury and commuted in however this would have been incredibly expensive.

There was poor nightlife around Thanet – however, a trip to Canterbury was always a good night! (not very regular occurrence though)

There was an extremely good sports and social club for employees to engage in activities/trips outside of work. Tenpin bowling was a particular highlight of my year. However, these were mostly aimed at families with young children – not 20+ students. Most activities outside of work were arranged by the placements for placements.