Functional Excellence Intern Review

I enjoyed the internship greatly! I learned so much that no one teaches you inside school or university. Many people will say learning never really starts until you have left formalized education, now I would completely agree. I've been exposed to business life and it's far different than anything I've done previously.

For 90% of the time I was valued as an equal and not just an intern. By this I mean typically you would associate an Intern to be doing all the jobs that people don't want to do, for about 10% of the time this was true, I was going through lines of data one by one to copy them over to another sheet. However the other 90% of the time I was doing important work towards the companies goals and could actually see where my work was going, which was a great feeling.

I was given constant support whenever I asked. Of course there is some extent to this you can't just ask someone to do something for you every time. Only when I was truly stuck or needed some idea generation did I go and ask someone. There was also a lot of guidance with regards to career path and what to look out for.

I was fairly busy all of the time but I am one of those people that does something as soon as I'm given it. So what would happen sometimes is my manager wouldn't have anything to give me so I went to other managers to give me work to do.

I was given lots of responsibility once I had earned the right to be given it. After completing several projects with colleagues I was tasked with my own project that I ran at my own pace and developed how I wanted. This gave me the opportunity to really show what I was made of.

Within the first 2 weeks of my internship at Siemens, I was screaming at my girlfriend that I wish I had known some of the stuff I know now, beforehand. My manager was extremely surprised I hadn't heard of Pivot tables before and that's definitely something I will be abusing towards the end of my studies.

The general atmosphere in the office was great, as an open planned office everyone was walking around talking and joking. One downside is I would occasionally get distracted by the ladies in the cubical next to mine talking about the latest episode of Love Island! Other than that very professional environment.

The overall internship was organized very well up until the point I had completed all the work set out for me. At this point it was up to me to find work from other managers and to help my manager out with his work load. He has told me several times I am making his life much easier.

The first 3/4 weeks of my internship were dedicated to learning the material. My manager had loads of content for me to study and we would have regular catch-up session to make sure the information was sinking in. The next 3/4 weeks was working collaboratively with other people and the final few weeks was showing off what I had achieved.

Future employment prospects look quite good, even though Siemens is such a huge company and this particular division is looking to reduce their head count. There are lots of opportunities abroad and I would be very interested working in another country. I hope I have presented myself as a viable candidate worthy of employment.

Generally the cost of living was very cheap and saving up money (which is a major reason for interning) is easy. The only downside I would say is that the area I lived in wasn't particularly safe and as it was a student area there were parties every other weekend which didn't make it easy to sleep sometimes.

There were many opportunities to get involved in outside of work like 2 football clubs a week meeting at different times, this wasn't really organized until the end of the placement though. I also don't have access to a car so I was walking to work everyday and sorting out rides would be a pain.