Placement Engineer Review

Work was largely interesting and covered a wide range of topics relevant to my degree. It was also very social with 40 odd students all living in student houses. It was good experience to have multiple projects on the go at the same time as this meant you could develop valuable time management skills alongside gaining engineering experience.

Students were given a large amount of responsibility to conduct projects that contributed to larger projects within the organisation. The results of projects would have important impacts on decisions made by project teams and team leaders during larger scale problem solving tasks. To this extent the work was valued as the results did matter in the grander scheme of things.

Support was provided mostly when asked for it. You were left to figure things out for yourself, read manuals and technical documents to find information needed rather than always getting spoon fed. However, if you really got stuck or just needed help with something like how to use a feature of a new bit of software then help was always available and people were willing to assist.

It was rare to be so busy you felt pressurised during the day. In general if you managed your time well then you'd have enough of it to complete testing and analysis within the hours for the week, Time was flexi so if you had to stay late one day you could always just leave earlier on another. This made it even easier to manage time and get work done in a reasonable manner.

An awful lot of responsibility was given to students, they were largely treated as full time employees for projects, some departments having a similar number of students and full time engineers. Students were also included in high profile projects rather than just given small, unimportant tasks to fill their time, this meant their work was important and input mattered.

The project and time management skills will be valuable skills to keep up during my final years at uni, as well as going into a new job. It was also good to see how engineering and scientific principles were applied and implemented in an industrial setting rather than academic. This context will help motivation and understanding while finishing my degree.

The general atmosphere in the office was quite good, everyone was friendly and we had regular team outings once a month to go for lunch or do various team building activities. People were good at helping each other when work loads got higher as well, especially during long testing where there is a lot of cleaning and tidy up work to do.

It was slightly confusing while applying as we could only apply for a generic 'engineering placement' and chose what departments we wanted to go into alter, but once that was sorted everything ran smoothly and it seems they have a very well established system of having students come and go each year. There was a hand over period with the previous students where they show you how to get set up and what is expected and such as well.

Training was available in any software you needed to use for you work. As well as team base work training to help your understanding of how to work with teams of multiple people. There were quite a few seminars run by in house experts in particular fields relevant to the work done by people which were an interesting way to share knowledge throughout the organisation.

It seems like they employ a lot of old placement students, if you show you're keen and willing to come back they run a bursary scheme where you stay in contact with the company during you last year at uni. This seems to be quite a good way to touch base with the organisation for future employment.

All the placement students are very sociable with each other, there is a large number of them so there's a lot of birthdays and celebrations going on. Most people live with other placement students in houses of 2-4 and commute to work together as well. This means it's still very much like living at uni in the sense that you're living with other students.

The cost of living was relatively low, which meant the placement student salary was just about enough to live without needed additional student loans to cover the cost. Rent and bills were cheap if you shared a house with other students and sharing commutes helped keep all the other costs involved with that down as well.

Daventry wasn't very lively but there was a lot more going on in Northampton where a lot of the students lived. Similarly, Coventry was more of a hub for nightlife. A fair few people lived in rugby which had less going on, but still had a few good bars and pubs that work socials occurred at a few times.

There was a social club that ran various event, I didn't get involved but it was there if you wanted to spend more time with people from work outside the working environment of the office in a social scene. Quite a few people played football together after work once a week. Occasionally there were larger activities like an organised rugby match and events to welcome the Olympics.