Summer intern Review

I enjoyed aspects of my work, I was placed in an engineering department that I had already spent time working with for a university dissertation last year. Some of my work was therefore carrying on with this project - which was useful to the company which was satisfying to know My other work was more interesting than this project and I enjoyed it more as it allowed me to research and report new findings to the company.

Everyone was kind polite and chatty during my placement whom I came across. My manager and main point of contact made me feel valued when appraising work completed for the majority of time, as my findings were of new material previously unknown in the company, so my manager and other engineers took an interest in what I had to say.

Not a lot of support was required for the majority of time as my work was largely research based and reporting - which I could complete on my own. Weekly manager review meetings gave my supervisor the chance to guide me on where I was maybe going astray from targets, or for extra areas to consider in my work, which helped me to tailor my work to help the department.

The two projects given to me were large and ongoing for the whole placement, there was always research/write up work to continuously complete to keep me occupied. On occasions where other work (eg. experimental testing) was conducted, I was busier, and other days when waiting for feedback/responses from other people I was left slightly less busy.

This is difficult to judge due to the nature of projects given to me, but my lines of work were quite low priority projects that have been around the business for years - so whilst I was the only person working on it and had full responsibility, I feel like being given a higher value project would have shown I had been given more responsibility.

I did not really use or develop any new skills whilst on this placement, I already have researching, report writing and presenting skills from previous work, so in this sense I did not learn anything new from my placement. Formal training received was quite minimal, I booked myself onto a training course to learn more about the companies products to help myself here, but otherwise the only training I gained was from asking engineers occasional questions in passing. This has all helped to improve my knowledge of gas turbines for possible future careers.

Quiet and subdued mostly, everyone was happy and talkative enough when approached, but for the majority of time all workers were focused on their own tasks, and sit in silence listening to music. Occasionally visiting parties would prompt staff to become more fun and chatty but otherwise it was a quiet and hard working place to be.

Organisation is generally below par, I requested to not be in this department for my placement - as I had already worked here through the year it would have been better for my development to have had this placement somewhere else to get a different and broader experience of the business. This was ignored. Also ordering of IT equipment (essential for work) was not sorted before starting, so I was left with no PC unable to do real work while one was ordered. The entry level talent team who organize all of this are also poor at responding to queries, often lose documents which have to be sent multiple times.

Bursary scheme is generous and paid placement scheme is a far better deal than other companies offer - this shows a quite large investment in my development whilst being part of the company. Training courses were completed free of charge so whilst I had to book them myself, the company supported my development by covering costs.

Due to current business conditions from what I have seen the prospects for attaining a full time position in an area of interest to me are quite slim - from talking to past scholarship students and knowing the general goings on within the company. Therefore I am not convinced of a sure future within this company.

There have been a mixed group of around 10 interns from various departments and ages, and we have had a good social time whilst being here by conducting regular meetings to discuss our work/the company, and meet out of hours to socialize. This has been a good team building aspect to the placement.

Housing is at an elevated price due to being a university student area, however it is much cheaper than prices seen at different university cities. Social living activities are no more expensive than in any other areas, but are not often taken up as the cost of university and housing leaves little money spare for out of work activities.

There are plenty of pubs/clubs for nightlife opportunities, however a lot of these are quiet and have little atmosphere over the time I have been on placement, as Lincoln is a largely student town and in summer there are no students here to fill venues. So it has largely not been worth going out for nightlife whilst on placement.

No opportunities are given out/commonly distributed, it seems you have to know the right people to get involved with small group activities. The company does have for example a football team, but it is a closed group affair, and only from hearing about it passed down from other people can you find out about such activities.