Business Development Engineer Review

I really enjoyed my work placement with National Grid, it was a great experience and a really worthwhile use of my time. There was a lot of variety in the projects I got to work on and chat to people about and the general atmosphere of the office meant I felt relaxed.

My colleagues were all very easy to work with and get along with on a personal level. They made me feel welcome very quickly once I arrived and they were good at involving me in casual chats, so our relationships weren't entirely based in work- which is nice because you can get to know them much easier. Even people I didn't interact with regularly were amiable to a coffee and a chat if I wanted to know something about their project.

I was given plenty of support by my manager and all the other senior employees as they genuinely wanted me to do well on my placement . They checked regularly to see if I felt overburdened or left with nothing to do, which is very helpful as sometimes placements can swing between the extremes.

I was rarely left with no work to do as there was always something I could be getting on with or someone I could help out with their work. Of course there were a few days that were less busy due to projects going slow or people who would give me work being off but these issues come with territory of being a project based office.

I was given a reasonable amount of responsibility with the tasks I were assigned, within my capabilities, that directly affected the results of projects I was working on. This made me feel like a valued member of the team that was actively working with them, rather than just a placement student being given busywork.

While on placement I learned a lot of soft skills to do with working in an office environment that you don't necessarily think of when you think of skills you would pick up while on placement. Transitioning from uni to the working environment is not a straight switch so having a placement teaches you how to concentrate for the whole working day and also to be more professional.

Everyone in the office (all the way up to the director) was always up for a chat if the occasion called for it, if you were doing work no one would bother you obviously. It was easy to organise chats with people who may not be in you department but you were interested in their project. Everyone seemed to feel comfortable which created a good atmosphere.

From the beginning, a couple months before the placement began, I was in contact with people about what projects I would do and what places I wanted to visit. I was doing a year abroad for university and their semester started earlier than usual so National Grid accommodated for that by letting me start earlier.

National Grid has invested a lot of time, effort and money into me since they seemed to be very keen to hire me after the placement finished. I had a number of training sessions about how the company functioned overall to make sure I wasn't confined to only understanding the engineering departments of the company.

They are very appealing for me for a number of reasons: I like where I would be living and working from a geographic point of view, I like the work I would be doing for the company and I like the company in general. The way my placement works is that I am almost guaranteed an offer to work with them so as long as I still like them I will most likely end up working for them.

I lived slightly further away from the other students on placement, along with another girl, so we tended to do stuff together on the week nights but at weekends we went and hung out with the rest of the students on placement. I didn't tend to go out with other colleagues in the evening just because we spent a lot of time together at work it wasn't really necessary to meet outside.

The cost of living was not too bad for the duration of my placement and for the amount I went out to socialise the price was good. I got paid for my placement as well so that made it easier to live a bit more relaxed as I never had to worry about money while working for the company.

Luckily I don't really like going out because otherwise there was very little to go on for nightlife where I stayed. Admittedly I was away from most of the other students so that was a problem, but where I was living there was very little to do even in regards to going to a gym or the cinema. I would not recommend other placement students living where I did.

There were some opportunities to get involved with activities outside of work however as I worked in a different office from many of the other students it was difficult to take full advantage of these. There were not many activities organised by the office we were in to do things outside of work., however the ones that were organised were very nice.