Process Technologies Intern Review

A really relaxed, fun, open atmosphere full of incredibly friendly people where no two days are the same, doing work that is directly related to my degree and skills as well as allowing me to delve deeper into my own personal curiosity about the world of science, engineering and food. There is plenty of opportunity to do work outside your station in other teams and indeed even in completely different roles. Not to mention a great mixture of office, lab, pilot plant and factory scale work. Hands on practical as well as theoretical work. You get to see a very wide breadth of the company as a whole, allowing you to not only get a feel for life in a job using your degree but also how that role effects every area of the business. You're not just finding out what it's like in food for a chemical engineer, but what it's like in food for all jobs. Perfect.

Highly valued. Everyone at Mondelez has time for you. Even those right at the top of the corporate ladder. Everyone fully understands the role you have and what your skills are and you are treated as a member of the team right from the word go. There is NEVER an instance where you are made to do "intern work", low risk, high lead time projects that have no real impact on the business and don't test you. Never occurs. You work on real projects, directly with the most senior members of the business, having a real impact and your opinions and decisions are always taken into account. You are an equal, not an intern.

As much as was required. With the large impacts of your projects on the business, there is a little bit of a sense of being thrown in the deep end. But in the best way possible. Your manager/supervisor stands with you every step of the way during your time and gives you as much or as little space as you require. But support and help doesn't just come from them, everyone around you is more than willing to help you out and answer as many questions as you need. There is no such thing as a bad question and there is no such thing as needing too much help at Mondelez. Your team is like your family and your line manager is very much like an amazing older sibling. Gives you encouragement and support, advice and literal hands on help whenever you need it but also knows when to step back and let you develop yourself in your own way. You're not molly coddled, but you certainly aren't left to defend yourself. The perfect balance.

No Two days are the same. One minute you could be running a weeks worth of trials in the pilot plant, next you could be bouncing from meeting to meeting trying to get a new project off the ground and moving. Or sitting at your desk looking at data, running a sensory panel, getting a look inside the factory and getting your hands dirty. You will be as busy as you make yourself. If you feel like you don't have enough to occupy your time, ask for more work. No one will turn you down. Feel like you have too much work, ask for some support from your colleagues, they will be happy to oblige. There is no point during your placement where you should feel you are too busy or idle and it is down to you to make sure that happens. Only you know what your work load is like and those around you will be happy to accommodate. Having said that, they have a lot of experience running intern and grad schemes so often you will find you have just about the right amount of work to contend with anyway, and in a very varied manner too. Especially with the intern scheme project you will do alongside your regular work.

You are given a lot of responsibility and a lot of freedom. Your placement is very much up to you. And as I've already mentioned, your projects have a very real, very large, direct impact on the business and you are responsible for how that project goes. On the other hand, if you find yourself making too many mistakes and breaking any rules in the pilot plant or factory, you will find your responsibility slowly taken away. The amount of responsibility you have on the placement is very much an organic, dynamic thing. You can take on as much responsibility as you feel you can handle but it will be dialled back if necessary to find a sweet spot where you and your colleagues can get the best work out of you.

The extent to which this placement has assisted me in my degree and indeed in my like skills in general, is unfathomable. The work involved teaches you new ways of looking at a problem, it massively improves your ability to network and work with others in a team. It allows you to see a whole new level of depth to your studies so far, so you can really start to understand some fundamental concepts a lot better. The work also allows you to apply previously theoretical understanding to a real world application which you can see in front of your eyes, which then provides you with a whole new basis for understanding things, meaning that your return to uni provides you with a set of real world examples that you can then apply other learning to. E.g. you can run your thought process backwards; rather than "ooh look, I've seen that real world thing in my theory at uni" you can think "Ahh yes, I can understand this concept if I think about it in terms of that experiment I ran at Mondelez". So the placement offers a real chance for personal development in terms of your softer skills as well as improving your technical knowledge.

There is a very friendly and open atmosphere in the office where everyone can have a really good laugh and have a lot of fun. But at the same time, everyone instinctively knows when people need to knuckle down to some work. Having said that, it is the very fun environment that allows for so much work to get done. The environment does not feel overly serious, which takes the pressure off and allows you to really think and get the best out of your work. There is also no stress or worry about having to go and talk to someone about something, everyone has time for you and so going to someone's desk to chat to them about something is a regular occurrence and not at all a burden.

Very well organised. They have been running the scheme a few years now and are always very interested in hearing from the interns about how it is being run. They very much want to tailor the experience to you and years of this open mindedness about the program has led to a very slick, seamless product, that is still continuously changing. There is a very well designed organisation of the program that leads you to never really having to ask too many questions about the program itself. As an example, the moment you arrive you find yourself with a timetable already filled in with training activities and induction sessions to get you acquainted with everything. Your email, company laptop, HR system, everything is already set up waiting to go for you so that on day 1 you can get straight into your work. There's no awkward transitioning periods where you're sitting around waiting for things to be done.

The company is VERY interested in making sure you get what YOU want out of the placement. If there is something you want to go and try in another area, if there is something personally you want to work on about yourself or your study the company will happily set that up for you. They honestly couldn't have more time for you as an individual, they want you to come out the other side as more well rounded individual and even if you decide you hate the placement (which I doubt) then they will still everything within their power to make sure you get something good out of it. Even if it's something as simple as presentation skills, if you want to improve that area, they will make it happen by any means.

There Is unfortunately no guarantee that the intern program will lead you straight into a permanent job with the company, it is possible, but not a guarantee like with some programs. Nevertheless, the appeal of working there permanently is very high. It really is a great place to work and offers a lot in terms of future career prospects and internal promotion. I would certainly love to work here full time and they certainly view their intern program as a year long interview, as they feel it is difficult to truly judge your fit without actually having you work for them. So they do look for people who have worked with them before during direct hire, but not necessarily straight away.

The intern program tends to take on 20-25 interns (across ALL the RDQ functions) a year, so there is plenty of opportunity to socialise in and out of work. The two locations for the RDQ placement (Birmingham and Reading) are also two university cities and hence have a very wide variety of things for you to do with your free time and as a group. It would be difficult to work for a company like mondelez, especially with such a large intern pool, and not develop strong social ties. To give you some idea, the intern community here at Bournville (Birmingham) meets outside of work maybe 2-3 times a week, whether in large or small groups and many interns actually live together. So there is a very strong intern bond socially speaking.

That is a question very much dependent on the individual situation. Personally, living on my own, cost hasn't been too extreme. My rent is inclusive of some bills and council tax and is of a competitive rate for the area and certainly very cheap compared to previous accommodation in Guildford. Those that are living with other people have said similar things about their living costs too. As far as socialising goes, it depends what you find yourself doing. Drinking is certainly cheap in the local area and not short of options regarding that, but there are some things to do in Birmingham that are very expensive, such as certain things in the jewellery quartet, But most of the shops are chain so the prices are similar to the rest of the country, and entertainment varies from free shows at pubs right up to VERY expensive high society events. Your experience will be as expensive or as cheap as you want it to be, but I certainly do not feel like price has hindered me from doing anything I want to whilst here. Conveniently, most of the houses available are student houses and so are very competitively priced too.

Incredible. Birmingham is a huge, international city full of exciting people and new experiences. With bars, clubs, pubs and restaurants right across the city there I no shortage of places to enjoy Birmingham at night. And with so many people living and working there AND being a student town, there is no shortage of people too to make sure the night is always alive. Your night can range from as quiet or as crazy as you like depending on where you go and being such a vibrant city, there is no lull on any weeknights. There is always someone out to have a good time, regardless of what day of the week it is.

Absolutely loads. Just because you are away from uni doesn't mean your uni hobbies have to stop. Many people at work will invite you to their after work activities, such as bands, climbing, dancing, arts classes, running, sports of all varieties and so much more. All normally within in the local area. It's all out there and right on your door step, just got to find it. That's another one of the great things about Birmingham being a big city, there's no shortage of things to do. If you don't feel like you want to go with people from work, still find it anyway, your hobby will be being represented somewhere, that's for certain. The advantage of being a uni town as well is that Birmingham University opens it's doors to placement students in the city and allows you to temporarily join their societies, so keep up your uni society interests with a new uni for a year. It's a great opportunity to hang out with people your age who you aren't working with too.