This review was submitted over 4 years ago, so some of the information it contains may no longer be relevant.
Rating
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The Role
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The Company
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The Culture
- 1. To what extent did you enjoy your work placement or internship?
- 2. To what extent did you feel valued by your colleagues?
- 3. To what extent were you given support and guidance by management/your supervisor(s)?
- 4. How busy were you on a daily basis?
- 5. How much responsibility were you given during your placement?
- 6. To what extent did/will the skills you developed, and training you received, assist you in your degree studies and beyond?
- 7. What was the general atmosphere in your office?
- 8. How well organised was the overall work placement or internship set up?
- 9. In terms of personal training and development, to what extent did the company or firm invest in you?
- 10. What were the perks on your work placement?
- 11. How appealing are future employment prospects within the organisation?
- 12. Was there a good social scene amongst any fellow placement students/colleagues?
- 13. What was the cost of living and socialising in the area you worked in?
- 14. What was the Nightlife like in the area you worked?
- 15. Were there many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work?
The Role
The internship enabled me to work on a C# application which is directly inline with what I want to be doing after I graduate - a group project was also set for all the interns across different departments and cities. Although this joint project gave me a lot of experience with working in a team and having meetings/presentations, it did take up a lot of my time and ended up distracting me from fully completing my programming work, which should have been my biggest focus as it is more relevant to my future career.
Working in the Leeds office felt great for the most part - I established a lot of connections and made some friends among my colleagues. After getting to know people, there was much more of an informal vibe which was great. The company emphasises a flat hierarchy whereby everybody's role is supposed to be valued as importantly as everyone else's - I definitely got this feeling, other than the odd time where some of the London interns who I was supposed to be meeting with got kicked out of their rooms because "more important" people needed to use them.
The support I was given couldn't have been better - Even though I didn't see my manager all the time (because he's a very busy guy), he would always answer my questions. The other trainers in the academy, and also the staff in the Research & Development office were very approachable and would always do their best to give any support that I needed on my projects.
Business varied from day-to-day, as you would expect in any job. However, as mentioned, the group intern project tended to swamp me at times when I would have been better value to the company working on the application that I was developing. On the whole however, I managed okay.
The management of both projects I was working on was solely in the hands of the other team members and I. There were some times when we would consult with our managers for general advice, but we were pretty much given free reign in terms of how we organised our work. However, other than the two projects, I was not really responsible for anything else while I was there.
I become well versed in SQL, and also picked up some valuable project management, business intelligence, ASP.Net, and presentation skills.
The Company
The atmosphere was generally fairly quiet, however every so often we would get up and eat cake for somebody's birthday
At the beginning of the internship, I got the definite feeling they didn't really know what to do with us - also, half way through developing an application, I got told by a member of staff to essentially start again and do something differently, just because of this person's preference. However, I stood my ground and continued doing what I was doing, as this would enable me to produce the best quality product for the company.
During my first week, I took SQL training and sat in on a Professional Skills class. Other than that, most of the knowledge I gained was from learning myself, or asking other members of staff.
National Travel
Company Parties/Events
As of this moment, wouldn't like to say.
The Culture
During a trip to Glasgow, I went on a night out with the other interns, and there were quite a few pub lunches with the other trainers. We also went bowling.
I commuted from Hull, which is cheap as chips, however I had the cost of the travel to and from Leeds, which was not quite so nice. Leeds is probably on the more expensive end of the spectrum for the North, but is fairly average for the UK as a whole.
Didn't get involved in the Leeds nightlife so wouldn't know
A few meals out, and the summer party which was great fun
Details
Internship (1 Month+)
Yorkshire and Humberside
August 2016