Product Engineer Review

I had a great time at my internship, not only was my work enjoyable and directly applicable to my university studies, but I was encouraged to go see many different departments within the company and what they do to get a feel for the business as a whole. This helped me understand how my work contributed to the final product and made my experience feel a lot more exciting and well rounded.

My colleagues made me feel welcome from the beginning and treated me like any other employee and not just the student. I was invited to any meeting they thought might be useful and I could always ask to shadow them if I had a quiet period in my own work and wanted to see what different projects involved.

I was given lots of support as I had more than one supervisor I could turn to if I had any questions. Sometimes it felt as if my line manager was too busy to help me properly so it was good to know I had a few different people available I could ask for help if I needed it.

There were definitely days where I had very little to do. I was given one large project at the beginning but some days I couldn't make any progress until information came through from another source and I had nothing else to pick up whilst I waited. You can however ask other teams for small pieces of work to keep yourself busy in these quiet periods so as long as you are proactive you can find things to do.

My project had a lot of responsibility attached as my final conclusions would be included in the design process for future parts. Although I was given guidance, I was encourage to take the project in any direction I felt necessary and was in control of my own timing plans.

I developed lots of skills that will help me when I return to university both from a technical perspective and more general project management skills. You are encouraged to undertake whatever training you think will help you in your role so you have a lot of freedom to develop any skills you want.

The office is very busy but the general atmosphere still remains friendly and relaxed due to the open plan layout. There is lots of areas away from desks to hold more informal meetings and the whole office gets involved in lots of charity events which brings people from different teams together more.

At the beginning the placement felt very badly organised as little information was shared after the verbal offer. You didn't actually find out where you had been allocated until a couple of weeks before the start date so it felt like a gamble organising accommodation. However after the allocation the on boarding process was pretty seamless and there were lots of induction events to make you feel welcome. The project itself was well defined and I knew exactly what I was expected to deliver which was very helpful.

You are encouraged to apply for whatever training you feel would help you but sometimes it was difficult to book yourself onto a training course as they are very busy and spaces fill up soon after they are posted. Most of what training you undertake is up to you to organise so you are in control of how much you develop.

The company takes on lots of graduates every year and your manager is the one who recommends if you are successful or not so it feels like you have a good chance of future employment.

The company organised student accommodation where a lot of us chose to stay. This meant there was a reasonable social scene except the early starts meant it was mainly reserved for weekends.

The student accommodation the company organised was at a preferential rate and was much cheaper than trying to organise your own place to live. Because of this all the interns were close together and it was easy to save money by sharing lifts to and from work. Socialising was as reasonable as could be expected from living in a city centre.

Very little choice so if you didn't have much option than to go to the same club every week, whether you liked it or not.

Not a great deal.