NPD Engineering Intern Review

I really enjoyed my internship at Eaton mainly because of the levels of responsibility I was given and also the people at my workplace. The people make such a difference. I was fortunate to have 5 fellow interns on the same site as myself and lots of young people around which helped improve the office environment.

At Eaton, you do not feel out of place as an employee. I really liked the fact that you are given your own work laptop, desk, telephone number and email address. You feel like a valued member of the team and your colleagues trust you to carry out the work that is needed.

The infrastructure at Eaton allows for good support and guidance by management, however in my case I felt there was a lack of structured support from my line manager. This is an isolated case because every manager works in different ways. On the plus side, I felt if I really did need some support there were plenty of colleagues and other senior members of staff who I could approach.

In general, I would say I was kept at a good level of busy throughout my internship. There were certain periods in the year where I had a smaller workload, but I ensured I kept myself busy on my own accord. For example there was always the option of doing self-learning on Eaton University or studying manual guides in the lab.

This would be the biggest plus of doing an internship at Eaton for me. You are valued as one of the team where the only times where you may not be allowed to do something is to comply with regulations such as a lack of training. I really liked the fact that you can carry out tasks that are really important for the company without anyone saying you can't because you're an intern.

We received many training days as part of the Intern Programme which I thought was extremely helpful and also allowed us to meet up with all of the interns across the UK which is always a nice day away from the usual work routine. I developed many skills that will definitely be useful for the future. However the main way of developing skills is through working regularly in an office environment for an extended period of time.

The general atmosphere in the office was really positive and good in general. There are times where it is really quiet in the office but I would allocate that to everyone working hard to keep the business running. Although the engineering department can be a little quiet, having so many other departments in the office definitely helped the working environment.

I have to give it to Shaun for arranging a well organised Intern Programme with many training days and events throughout the year. As Eaton have been doing internships for many years, you can see that the structure is there and the work sites are used to having interns, with all the support present. They also accommodate for the handover period between old and new interns, making it easier for the managers of the interns.

I know that the company is keen to develop me as an individual, however I feel that in terms of actual investment there wasn't much of this at all. Apart from the intern training, the company did not invest in any training for us. We went the whole year without undergoing a full lab training when my role was almost completely based in the test lab.

Personally I didn't feel that my work site showed any passion towards trying to bring me back to work for them after my graduation. We were told briefly about the Graduate Programme and the Young Talent schemes, but there was a lack of real drive to motivate us interns onto these.

There were fellow interns and colleagues which I really enjoyed working with and having around the office which was great, but in terms of meeting up outside of work there was nothing going on bar things I instigated myself. It helped that I also lived with three of the other interns. Loughborough is a quiet town.

Standard student accommodation prices.

Loughborough has a really good Uni so there is nightlife, but I wasn't a fan. Try Notts.

Not through the company itself. Everything I did outside of work was down to myself.