Industrial Placement Review

I really enjoyed my year at Aldi. I spent 5 months in store, 4 months with an area manager then 3 months in head office this meant I got to see Aldi from every angle. As well as the great variation in roles you complete throughout the year, the tasks you are asked to complete along with the responsibility you are given makes the year at Aldi one of the most challenging but rewarding years of your life!

For the entire year, you are treated as an area manager and therefore you feel extremely valued by all colleagues from store assistants to the regional managing director.

At the beginning of the placement, you are assigned an Area Manager Mentor whom you can contact if you have any questions or worries throughout your year. At the start of the placement, I would have updates/general catch up with my mentor every week however as the year progressed these updates became less frequent. Furthermore, while completing my second stint of area manager time I had very little feedback from the area manager I was working with. In addition to your mentor, I had 4 updates with the finance and administration director to discuss our progress and well-being. However, these updates became much more frequent while I was completing my final project whereby I had an update every week up until the final presentation.

Very! There was never a moment where I had nothing to do nor did I find myself getting bored with the job I was completing. Having such a busy day meant 10-hour shifts flew by.

The amount of responsibility given to placement students is second to none. Within the first few weeks of joining the business, you are trusted with the safe key of a store. While working in store you are treated as an assistant manager and therefore have the responsibility of running the store in the absence of the store manager. While completing the area manager time, you are trusted to conduct the cash audits for the store, conduct a store's inventory as well as managing the store managers.

The skills I've learnt at Aldi won't directly help me with my studies due to my degree. However, the life skills and confidence I have gained through completing this year are invaluable and are most definitely going to help me with future career prospects.

The atmosphere within stores is often relaxed and very friendly, with many members of staff having a great sense of humour but also kindness. The atmosphere at head office is much more corporate, as this is where all of the directors are based, thus meaning there is a certain professionalism required while working there. Although the atmosphere is extremely corporate all of the assistants and directors are friendly and a majority are willing to help you.

At the start of the placement, we were provided with a training plan that broke down the year week by week with what we would be doing. However, my training didn't always follow the initial plan due to certain circumstances in one of the stores. There was also variation in the training received by all of the IPs in the region whereby some received more in-depth training than others.

Aldi invests a lot of time in their industrial placement students as we are potential future area managers. Therefore, throughout the year, you follow a similar training plan to the trainee area managers.

I would love to come back and work for Aldi once I've finished my degree as the responsibility and time invested into their employees is excellent.

Due to the geographical location of the all the placement students and nature of the job it was very difficult to organise any social events outside of work.

I was living at home throughout the year and therefore the cost of living was very low.

As I was living at home I was able to enjoy many nights with all my friends socialising when I wasn't working. However as some days you have to work long hours you often have to miss some social events.

I was still able to play netball and cycle throughout the year however I did have to miss a few training sessions due to different shift patterns.