Manufacturing Technology Industrial Placement Student Review

I enjoyed the placement quite a lot as it gave me a lot of responsiblity in the project work I had. It was also very interesting to see how a real plant operates and how changes can be made. I am also happy with how it helped me develop industry relevant skills and that I now have a great name on my CV as part of it.

From day one the team was very welcoming and I felt like a regular member within no time at all. They also provided me with as much support as I needed and I did not have to worry about asking for help from anyone as everyone was very friendly and supportive.

My supervisor gave me regular support and guidance which helped me massively keep to target deadlines with my projects and also was very helpful with my development. I was given all the support I needed when trying do get tasks done especially when something was new to me. She made sure I always knew what needed to be done to get to the next stage.

There could have been more work to do. Quite often depending on where I was with projects there was some times where I had only a few small tasks to do which left me a bit bored. Luckily though I could ask for more work, however it was not always possible for me to help people as everyone worked in different areas which I may have had less knowledge on.

I had a lot of responsibility on placement which made me very happy. I recieved multiple projects for the year which I was to lead, plus one project where I took almost complete ownership over a machine. I felt like the changes I made had real consequences and had a real benefit to the company.

I believe they will help me hugely. This placement has helped me develop skills which I had no previous experience with which will help me massively when finding a job outside of uni. It has also given me skills that I hope will drive me to success on my university course. I would not have been able to develop any of these skills without a placement.

The atmosphere was pretty great. There was rarely times when people would be unwilling to talk and quite often the whole office would be chatting. There was also a lot of funny banter between work collegues. The only time the office would die down was when there were not many people in the office due to meetings etc.

I feel that the placement was very well organised. Training and induction sessions were well placed and spread out throughout the year. I was given the right amount of time at the start to get a feel for the site and then after that I was given my projects for the year. A lot of introductory meetings were organised at the start as well to ease me into the work.

The company has put a lot of time and effort into helping to develop the placement students skills. We have received roughly 5 weeks of training in a number of different topics, some related to engineering work while others have been for more general skills such as presentation skills and communication etc. In terms of the work I was given it feels like it was designed to give me the right skills for jobs in the future.

There is a lot of scope to work with 3M in the future. There are many different sites in the UK to work at plus there is a lot of scope to move between different departments such as sales or HR regardless of the background you come from. The only reason I probably won't be working with them in the future is that I want to be in London and they don't have any sites there.

It was alright and often when we had training together so that all of the placement students and grads were together we would go on a night out which was a lot of fun. We also occasionally went to the pub or had a games night. There could have been more but that was mostly down to the fact that we didn't organise more.

It was reasonably cheap. Where I was located in Atherstone you could go to the pub and not spend too much and when we had training in Loughborough the cost of a night out wasn't too much. In terms of rent there won't be too many places that are cheaper.

Atherstone is a very small town in the middle of nowhere so the nightlife is practically non-existent. There are a few pubs about which are quite nice but apart from that there is basically nothing to do. When we went on training in Loughborough we went out and Loughborough has an ok nightlife as it is a student area.

There were some activities run by 3M or my office such as the christmas dos and the family fun days but they were fairly spread out and there wasn't that many of them. However there was a sports and social budget so when we decided to organise stuff as an office we did things such as go karting or went to see a play.