R&D Placement Student Review

For the first several months I really enjoyed the job, I felt like I was a valued member of the team, but as time went on, I saw other students get opportunities that were not available to me (and even if I asked for those same opportunities my team didn't have the same kind of budget as some other teams, so I couldn't do them). This meant that by the time I was in my final few months I really wasn't enjoying the work any more. I enjoyed the chances to go on factory trials, but in the end felt as though I did very little work of any importance. This placement is not good for someone who is really interested in science, as I did very little, but that was very dependant on the projects we had this year and my own personal experience.

I felt like the work I did was genuinely valued by my team and I really liked working with them, even though our team was constantly shifting.

Over my year as the team shifted I had two managers. Both of them were supportive, but they were very different, and I found it difficult to adjust between them. My first manager was very hands-off and would give me a lot of freedom in my work, but he was always available to help me. Whereas my second manager was new to being a manager and spent a lot of time checking in on me, which I found a little stifling as I was most of the way through the year at this point and felt I didn't need constant supervision.

My schedule varied a lot day to day and week to week. Some days I would have very little to do when our projects were on the back burners, but other days there simply weren't enough hours in the day for me to complete my work. Another issue is that a lot of the work I did had a very short deadline on it, often with the work needing to be completed by the end of the day. This imbalance was quite stressful as I liked being busy, but not overworked, and on slow days I was incredibly bored.

I was given about as much responsibility as I expected. I was given a couple of my own little projects which contributed to larger projects, but nothing that had a massive impact. As my placement drew to a close, shifts in my team meant that a member who wasn't a huge fan of having a student was put in charge of me and my manager, and she really cut down on my responsibilities, giving me more menial jobs to do.

I think this was a really good placement to get an idea of the working world and working in a multinational company, but I did very little science, so I don't think it will assist my studies much in terms of actual knowledge gained. It was very good to get an idea of time management and some equipment I was trained on was useful. Overall, it won't be much help for the next year, but once I've graduated it will be really useful.

Most people in the office were quite young, so there was a very friendly atmosphere most of the time. We also had a lot of international colleagues visiting at most times, so you could be talking to different people on any given day which kept things interesting. Around Christmas, there was a competition to decorate your desk/workspace, which was really good fun and cheered everyone up.

The placement team worked really hard to make the placements work, and I think it showed. For the actually running of the placement, everything was well thought out and ran smoothly. We had regular check ins with the team to monitor our progress and help us with any issues that arose.

I would say that my training was average for the company, and I think that further development was dependant on the specific team.

I might like to work for PepsiCo in the future as they are a great company with a lot of opportunities to work in different departments, however, after completing this placement I don't think that its really for me. I found the work to be very corporately driven, which doesn't align with my personal values.

Including myself there were 14 placement students working at my site, which was one of the best parts of the placement experience. It was a mixed group of people from around the country, from different universities and doing different courses and jobs. We lived together in three houses and spent a lot of time outside of work socialising. In the first two weeks the outgoing students planned a lot of activities with us to help us get to know each other, and from there we carried on. This was really nice, as it meant I didn't miss being away from university too much.

Compared to where I grew up (just outside of London) I found that the cost of everything was pretty reasonable. I didn't struggle with rent, utilities, food, or socialising in terms of money. In fact I think I was able to do something nay night that I wanted to, and I was able to put aside some money for my savings.

I don't really enjoy going clubbing, so I didn't actively seek anything out, but from all I heard, there don't seem to be many clubs. Leicester seems to have more of a bar scene, and those that I did go to seemed to be nice enough. That being said the city has a really good selection of places to eat out so that you can do evening activities.

I wasn't aware of any activities that took place outside of work, other than what the other students and I arranged ourselves. I think that for the main UK site office they have lots of sports clubs that can be joined, but aside from the gym on our site we didn't really have anything comparable.