Placement Student Review

Admittedly a large part of not enjoying it is due to thinking I would of been enjoying myself more at University. Also doesn't help that Peterborough is not a particularly interesting city to live in as someone who has been at university for 3 years prior. However none of the work I did felt particularly challenging and was mostly boring and just going through the motions type stuff.

It's not an unpleasant place to work in terms of working atmosphere and such, but felt to me like the departments you are in would function absolutely fine without you. It would be unfair to say they don't value you as you are thanked when you finish tasks or are willing to take one on.

The placement supervisor is very good, however the managers from the departments I did rotations in offer significantly less support than the placement supervisor. Admittedly the second departments manager was better but the first for lack of a better word was useless, for example he had to remind himself what project I was working on less than a fortnight before I finished that rotation.

Bored. First rotation had a generous estimate of 2 days of actually interesting work. The rest was either making graphs/spread sheets in excel. So much graph making that I was hesitant to ask for more work out of fear it would just be more spread sheets. second rotation was improved but still minimal work I generally had interest in, have started to just take on work as Its something to do.

On occasion I was given a reasonable amount of responsibility but most of the time no. Mostly consisted of errand work, or stuff no one else wants to do, or too busy to do. For example lugging parts from one side of the site to the other. The one bit of responsibility I was given was admittedly nice, but turned into a bit of damp squib, plus people wouldn't turn up to my meetings without prior warning.

This would be given one if I didn't learn a news simulation package, however that package is in house as I am fairly sure they do not use it outside of the company. I have not gone back to uni yet but some skills may become more apparent when I return. Obviously gives you a feel of how a business works and that kind of stuff, but would be very difficult to have a placement that did not do that. Being in a component team does give you an in depth knowledge, but obviously this is very specific so is unlikely to be that useful in further studies unless it comes up.

The offices are large so are never too quiet, which if you don't like dead silence is nice. However the bigger office does feel quite like a call centre; lots of people on the phone, phones ringing in the background. There is a cake culture across the company which is nice, so its rare for there not too be snacks knocking about. Most of the staff are friendly and up for a chat.

In terms of the overall organisation of the placement scheme nothing sticks out as being overly disorganised. Most of the complaints on my end would be to do with IT problems when first starting up, but I imagine that is fairly unavoidable.

Doesn't feel like a lot to be honest. Given that there is no specific training for any of the systems or software's that they use in the company. Trips are run as part of a group called the young professionals to other sites however these are often organised by other placement students or grads. There is opportunity to present within the departments, when leaving rotations the placement student will often present about what they did within the rotation.

Not at all appealing. Not to say that they would not offer places on the grad scheme to placement students. If the grad scheme is in any way similar to the placement scheme in terms of the kind of work you get, which it looks like it is, I would definitely not come back even if they offered.

There enough placement students for there to be, however on most weekends people would go away meaning that there were very few people around. Peterborough is not particularly interesting, especially when compared to wherever you are at uni so that doesn't help. There wads the odd young professionals organised event but these often had a woefully low turnout.

On the salary you have as a placement you are not going to have any issues with regards to living and socialising. Pubs are pretty cheap as its not London. Peterborough is also one of the best connected places for trains in the country, can get into London for less than 10 pounds.

In terms of nice pubs its pretty good, in terms of night clubs its pretty shocking: there is only one. Admittedly I have never been but I hear its one of the so bad its good ones so make of that what you will. The one thing you notice the most is the fact that there is not a university in the area.

Yeah, admittedly none of the advertised ones with work appealed to me, but there was a fair few. If you are a rower or even just fancy getting into it there is an excellent rowing club in Peterborough, only a 20 minute cycle from work. It offers learn to row courses and caters for all abilities and commitment levels.