CPE and Wireless Engineering Intern Review

I extremely enjoyed my placement, it has been an amazing year and I'm so sad to leave!

I was fortunate to be placed within a great team; we all got on really well, and I often found that towards the end of the placement my colleagues would come to me for help and advice, which was really nice to experience.

My manager was incredible, and always supported my through everything I did - particularly when it came to things I didn't enjoy doing, he would always dedicate time to help me through it (ps: if you're reading this, make sure your head doesn't explode!)

In the first few weeks I wasn't that busy purely due to there being so much to learn, so it involved a lot of document reading! However within a month or two, I had really found my feet and didn't go a day where I didn't have anything to do. Due to a member of the team leaving approximately 6 months in I did find myself sometimes with a lot to do, there were a few long days but these were evened out by a balance of fun days too!

I was given loads of responsibility... from handling our team's programme and resource roadmap (which is key to give stakeholders updates on our capacity and when we are planning to test different devices), to heading up one of the programs (in my case, our next generation set top box). This involved: thinking about how do we test it, who will test it, when will we test it and for how long, project delivery and resource costs,bug and issue management, data and results analysis, stakeholder management, vendor witness testing, reporting and executive recommendations. The outcome of this testing would decide whether this box would go into mass production, and although at times it was frustrating it was amazing to work on!

I think the main skill I gained during the placement was the increase in my self confidence, and learning to put my thoughts and ideas forward. I also improved my presentation skills, and 'data translating' skills to present complex data in a clear and concise manner to make it easy for stakeholders to comprehend.

Although the office I was based in wasn't the most glamorous, it was the people there who made it a fun place to be! The facilities in the Winnersh office aren't amazing, and the canteen shuts at 2 so you have to make sure you get your lunch and coffee in before then, but it's perfectly adequate and I never had any issues with it. Plus the toilets have recently been refurbished!

At the beginning it was a bit unclear where I was going to be based, and I didn't find this out until roughly 2 months before starting. However, once I arrived it all went smoothly, mainly down to my manager who ensured I always knew what was going on.

I attended a couple of relevant training courses to my team, and as part of our 'Intern Days' we had personal development training sessions from different speakers. I would have liked to have the opportunity to attend more 'soft skills' training sessions as I think this would have been more transposable into university and later life.

I think if you made a good impression throughout the year you are more than likely to get offered at least an interview/assessment centre for your relevant scheme. This was the case for me, I was fast tracked to interview stage and I am hopefully coming back on the engineering graduate scheme in 2017!

As I was the only intern based in Winnersh I didn't see as much of the intern community as others did, but I think this pushed me to network more with my colleagues - luckily mine were all lovely and we went out for meals every so often which was nice.

I was lucky enough to be able to live at home, so pretty cheap! Although I had a much longer journey as a result, I definitely was able to save money by doing this. However, most interns based in Winnersh/Hook lived in Reading, which is a student area so not massively expensive. Interns are always up for house shares too!

Winnersh Triangle is on an industrial estate so not much nightlife to speak of really! However, Reading is really close by which has restaurants, bars and clubs. There's also a Holiday Inn just down the road from the office which has a nice bar which we went to on occasion.

I personally didn't too much, but the opportunity is definitely there if you want to take advantage of it! This is all down to the intern and graduate community, for example there is a intern and grad football team, and opportunities to get involved in things such as fundraising events.