Project & Sales Intern Review

I have really enjoyed my placement year. It has given me a real insight into the business environment and how it operates and has taught me a great deal about what I may want to do in the future. I have been given some really good opportunities that I believe has made my year even better, for example, huge responsibilities over managing change management project and being able to lead a customer project too.

Within my department I feel very valued as a person, both on a personal and professional level. The same applies with my supervisor who I have worked with on my project work. This has been recognized through some kind comments after my final review presentation. There have been times however where I think some people overlook the opinion of an intern or the project they are doing, which can be frustrating, especially when trying to win certain departments approval for something.

I have been given a great amount of support by my supervisor and manager when I've asked for it. My supervisor in particular has always been able to offer me great advice when I've come up against a problem. The only negative however would be that both my supervisor and manager are in high roles so there are long periods of time where they haven't been in the office. Therefore, it has been tough to get around a problem at times as there aren't enough other employees to ask for specific project work support.

This is obviously varied dependent on what projects are going on and at what times. In general however, I have had a good balanced workload throughout the year. When all my projects were up and running I had constant weekly updates with my supervisor, alongside additional meetings when needed. I also had enough work in the meantime to keep me busy.

Throughout my placement I have been given huge amounts of responsibility, both with my project work and when I was given a customer project to manage. In all my work, I have taken the lead in a lot of the meetings and sorted out problems independently when they arose. I think this was the best way as it made us learn on our feet, which has been hugely beneficial for me and something I will take forward to future roles.

I believe everything I have learnt throughout this year will really assist me well both next year when I am back at university and in future jobs roles after graduation. The skills I have picked up this year, both in the office on a daily basis and in training courses I have completed are skills that I wouldn't have gained without doing a placement, and I hope they will prove to be worthwhile in my studies next year and beyond.

I was very lucky to have the office environment that I've had throughout this year. It is a very relaxed environment where it is not all work the entire time and we have the opportunity to speak to each other on a personal level as well, which has been good. There has also been a lot of fun had, with laughing and joking being at the forefront.

I think in general my internship with Siemens has been very well organized, with projects setup for all the interns to complete. There has however been times throughout the year when certain things weren't setup as well, for example, not getting work laptops on time, not having a set supervisor that monitors your progress throughout and not having buffer work to be carried out when the project work goes on hold. Overall though, these are minor issues that can easily be resolved for future interns.

There was some training days in which I completed this year, which were interesting and thought provoking. I do think however there could've been a few more days throughout the year where something else could have been arranged. Due to cost cuts there were some things we had to miss out on, such as travelling for training, so this is something I think could be looked at for the future.

I think future employment prospects with Siemens are high. Due to the fact that there are so many sectors in which Siemens operate in, there are a lot of opportunities all over the country, and not just where I have been this year. I am not sure the engineering industry is for me but I am certainly not writing off a return to Siemens in the future, wherever that may be.

I was really lucky this year with my placement that there were so many other interns working here as well. Overall over the 2 sites that operate in Lincoln, there was 22 interns so that provided a really good social scene for us all, both during and after work hours. The fact we are all students as well, in the same position as each other, it makes it very easy for us all to get on.

I think the cost of living and socializing in Lincoln throughout this year has been fairly cheap. I managed to find cheap rental accommodation for the year and when going out in town I never thought I was paying over what I thought for food and drink.

The nightlife has been good, mainly due to the fact that there has been so many of us interns to go out with when we do. I think of there was less of us the nightlife wouldn't have been as good.

Yes! There were lots of things that both were organized within the business and separately that I could get involved in. For example, every Thursday I played 5-a-side football with work mates, and then I managed to train with a cricket side in the winter whilst I was away from my home club.