Commercial Sales Engineering Review

My year has been very beneficial, I've had invalueable experience within the automotive industry. I was given some amazing opportunities such as travelling to France to work and visiting the Paris Motor Show. I would have enjoyed it more if I had a higher workload, or set weekly tasks.

I was warmly welcomed into the company and have developed some great wroking relationships with people in my office who aren't in the same team as me. I woud have felt more valued if I had been given more responsibility.

My planned supervisor changed at the start of my placement, so I was to share a manager with another placement student. I was given some support and guidance but this was difficult to recieve.

There's always going to be ups and downs, for a few months I had a handful of tasks to juggle meaning my days were busy. However, the majority of the placement I have found myself at a loose end. This spare time can be used on the Faurecia Learning Lab and I have recieved certificates for my time spent developing my industry knowledge and skills on here.

When I was given a task, I was then 100% responsible for completing this on time. I had responsibility to figure out how best to complete the task and talking to suppliers/customers to recieve the data needed. I would have scored this higher out of 10 if I had been given more tasks/a igher workload.

I developed the basic transferable skills such as leadership, communication, time keeping and team work. These will help me in future group work ad jobs. I als developed how to work in a set routine which I was continue into my final year. I recieved on the job training on different engineering aspects so these will help me with my BSc Product Design degree.

The general atmosphere in the office was positive, everyone was welcoming and it was small enough to get to know everyone on a personal level. Day to day the office is quite quiet.

This was not perfect due to the change in my manager at the start of my placement. However, as a company they are organised for placement students. There are student communicational events at the start and the end of the year.

They invested in my experience very well, sending me to work in France a few times. These were all expenses paid trips. I was sent to attend workshops where I could experience engineering reviews so this has been beneficial for my degree.

The VIE scheme (working for the company abroad) interestes me and the graduate UK scheme looks great. With the graduate scheme you study a specific masters, however I would like to choose my own subject to study as a masters so this is why I didn't rate 10/10.

There was only one other placement student in my office whom commuted from home. We did not do anything social over the year. There were some nice events with colleagues such as a Christmas dinner however these were only for special occasions and were not purely for social reasons.

I found some very affordable accomodation and the couple of towns near by were very affordable to eat & drink. These had the standard chain restaurant and bars so I felt these were normally priced.

There are clubs and bars in the next town over which I have heard about however I have never been due to the lack of people my age that I met on placement who lived locally.

There were a few games of football with colleagues but other than that there wasn't many activities outside of work.