Undergraduate Engineer - Driver Dynamics Review

On the whole I'm pretty neutral about my experience. I would probably come back again if offered but only in lieu of a better offer. The people and facilities etc are very nice and make the work day enjoyable but personally there was a distinct lack of intrinsic motivation for the work I was doing. Due mainly to my placement falling outside of my area of expertise and sometimes frustrating internal communication speeds.

My colleagues were very welcoming and friendly. I immediately felt like one of the old timers and was never treated as a lesser member because of my age/inexperience even when meeting with managers. In meetings people would always take in what you have to say and I personally never experienced and rude business behaviours.

My personal mentor was very helpful in terms of answering any questions I had about anything, including personal questions about job satisfaction. My manager has also been refreshingly frank and honest about what it's like to work for the company long term. My manager wasn't usually around but my mentor or other colleagues were always available to guide me.

My work load was very periodic. I spent quite some days with very little to do. It's not uncommon to have to wait more than a week for an email reply and I've had fellow employees not show up for meetings. I've had days where very very little was achieved. But some days I would be able to get into a project properly and I did feel busy and useful to the company.

I was given tasks to do that directly resulted in the spending of 5 figure sums. I had the autonomy to arrange meeting with any one I wanted and had to present work individually and take full responsibility for some outcomes. I did have a good sense of responsibility during my placement.

I was not placed in a role relevant to my line of study. I'm studying electronics and I was placed in a mechanical engineering role. It's true that some of the processes will carry across all streams of engineering but the vast majority of what I have done on this placement was learnt on the fly and will not be useful to my future career. General experience in a large company has been useful though but that would be true of any placement I feel. I wouldn't say that I was given any 'training' at all.

Very professional and pleasant place to work. Everyone was very friendly and approachable. It was my experience that this was the case across the entire company.

The general organisation of the internship was not great but good. I had to email a few documents three times to different people all telling me I hadn't handed the same thing in and it was quite a long time before we found out where we would be working which made finding cheap accommodation quite difficult. But past that it was quite well set up.

I'm not quite sure what is meant by this question. The company has only really invested in me financially by paying us for the summer (UK minimum wage). There was no personal training / tutoring as such, only informally from colleagues.

JLR is currently undergoing massive expansion so it seems likely that most interns will receive a job offer. I can't say how long this will last but they seem keen to keep us on board and even offer a cash incentive to come back for the graduate scheme.

A large group of us undergraduates were all living in the same building which was partly organised by JLR which meant there was a decent social scene amongst all of us living there. People who weren't in Engineering/manufacturing didn't quite have the same atmosphere I don't think. There were one or two events organised by my department as well.

Being in the south and things weren't particularly cheap but not unreasonable. The canteen at work was supposedly subsidised but I couldn't afford to eat there more than a few times. We lived in Coventry which has a few cheap student bars etc but for people living in places like Leamington Spa things weren't nearly as cheap.

Not great but not totally awful, Coventry isn't very big and it's pretty quiet over summer without any of the students there. You only really get the choice of one club though.

I can't really think of many. There was an Graduate Ball which the undergrads were also invited to but beyond that it deepened on your department. There wasn't really much offered to me, I think there's a few sort of interest groups like a group that all go cycling together but nothing formal or easy to get into without knowing the right people.