Application Engineering Placement Student Review

I have absolutely loved my placement so far, so much so that I have extended my contract to stay until the week before I am due to go back to university. I have been involved with a range of different tasks that have kept me engaged throughout. I have also been given an increasing level of responsibility for the work I've been asked to complete. There has been plenty of opportunities for me to travel on company business within the UK to both customer sites and other company facilities.

I felt included and valued by my colleagues within the first week of meeting them. I was placed into a very friendly team of people who were welcoming to me at the earliest opportunity. Any questions I had they answered and explained the company processes to me whenever I needed help with them. I was included in the weekly 5-a-side football match and am currently still playing to this day.

I was given support whenever I asked for it although it is of course better for your own development to try and address the problem yourself first. My colleagues gave me plenty of help with any day to day work based issues and my manager was there for monthly 1:1's. You are told you can have 1:1's as often as you need them which I found a really good thing as it helps to keep your manager up to date with any work or issues you are facing. Any issues I did have were quickly addressed by my manager.

I was kept busy on a daily basis with a number of different ad-hoc projects and day to day/ weekly tasks. There was plenty of work to be doing and if there wasn't there was always an opportunity to join in with somebody else and help them. Some of my day to day work was of what I would call core tasks which were always the same kind of structure but there are times were work would come in and that would be more reactive work.

I was given a lot of responsibility during my placement and felt as though as I was being challenged with the work I was doing. I found this to be a really good environment to work in as there was plenty of support if i needed it. From looking through my project reviews I would say that my responsibility stepped up every three months during my placement.

I believe a lot of the skills are transferrable to my studies and beyond due to the department I was in. I was in a department in what's known as a customer facing role which means I have direct contact with the customer. This has provided me with the opportunity to develop and further a number of different soft skills including communication and presentation skills.

The general atmosphere within the office for me was very team based. There were another 2 departments either side of me who between the three of us all worked together as a larger team. There was the occasional joke and laugh between the teams which helped to maintain good daily working relationships. I wouldn't say it was all head down, work and don't talk because it wasn't, it was a positive working environment.

The placement was very well organised. I had a week of on-boarding to get to know the other placement students and the team I would be working with. During the on-boarding we were given presentations on company procedures and also in relation to tax and what our tax code should look like. This was very beneficial for any one who ran into tax code issues as the placement started between 2 financial years.

I think the company went very far in training and developing me for a number of reasons. I was automatically placed on the student development program which covered 5 key modules of soft skills. The program covered presentation skills to time management and everything in between which I found benefitted me massively with my day to day role. I was also given the same training week that's given to engineers around the world as a base overview week of their roles and responsibilities. I would have liked to have done a full engine teardown which at the time of writing I do have in the pipeline but have not fully completed.

Future employment here is massively appealing. I have really thoroughly enjoyed my placement and so an offer of a graduate role would be perfect. The company supports your development through a number of in house and online training courses and provided it doesn't interfere too much with workload I have found that they were very supportive. (You can't expect to be training all the time).

Yes I would agree with this statement. The other placement students and I conducted a lot of charitable events together some of which ran outside of working hours. We also did go on nights out together. The local town itself isn't too bad for nightlife and Newcastle is only 40mins away. There were plenty of opportunities to go out to the local area particular at the start of the year when everybody is getting to know one another. This died down to around 1 event per month after Christmas.

I did live at home but I am aware that the cost of living is relatively low in terms of rent and I know people who have got a lot for their money and also others who didn't get quite so much. I would advise anyone to look up the area in advance and do plenty of research but in general the cost of living is cheap. Pints are around £2.20 and a game of five-a-side will set you back around £5. You can probably get a meal for two for around £35-£40 including drinks depending on what you are drinking.

Nightlife is good although I'm not too big on it. There are quitter pubs to go if you like that kind of thing along with nightclubs for those that want to stay out later. There are some good bigger cities such as Newcastle that are only 40mins by train and York is only 30mins by train. The town is very well connected by train which opens up a lot of doors for nightlife.

Yes there were charitable events such as bowling and fun runs from the get go. The company is big on charitable events and so it opens up a lot of doors for activities outside of work. I played in the weekly 5-a-side match that was set up off site from around the 4th week of my placement. Within my team people often organised team building activities such as meals out and go-karting.