Industrial Placement Review

I enjoyed the social aspects of my work placement and getting to experience what a job role in engineering consultancy comprises of. The work environment and location were both excellent, however, the work was not as challenging or as varied as I had hoped which was the only let down of my experience.

As a placement student I did not feel particularly valuable to my colleagues. There was a clear bureaucratic system in the environment which works well if you have been there for a long time but employees such as placement students/ graduates who were new starters definitely went through a 'new starter' process of doing all the brunt work.

My line manager and main manager were very supportive however because it was unclear who my direct manager was at times it occasionally left me unsure who I should report to/ ask for more work from. I found excellent guidance and support from other employees who 'took me under their wing'.

Not busy at all. Due to the nature of a consultancy you can end up doing a placement at times where there is loads of work to do or you can end up with a role where there is very little for you to do at all. Unfortunately my placement arrived at a time where a large bid had just been lost and therefore I was relatively inactive for the entire placement.

I was not given a lot of responsibility during the work placement. I fully understand engineering work needs to be quality checked and assured so most of the work I completed was clearly outlined and checked afterwards with very little room for personal input and autonomy in what I was doing.

I went into the work placement very open minded but aware that perhaps engineering consultancy would not be what I wanted to do long term and this experience was primarily about me working out if this sort of job role would be for me or not. The work I did was less challenging than anything I had done in my degree up to that date but it was wonderfully formative in that it clarified working in an engineering consultancy is not for me which is an excellently conclusive binary outcome.

The office was very social and entirely open plan. It was borderline impossible to get a cup of tea without someone asking you how your weekend was. Personally as an individual who prefers to sit in the corner and try not to engage in conversation with everyone around me I found this challenging.

I think as the company is very large and they have constant employees turning over and internship students etc they did not specifically outline what my job role was going to be for the time that I was there. Therefore due to the fact there was not a lot of work going around in the office in general whilst I was there, there was no specific plan for me which meant I had to go around the office and ask for work.

There was no outside training or opportunities to develop outside of the work I was doing during my specific role. I think this was the norm for placement students as it was clear that I was there for a fixed term, however, not a lot of other employees were doing extra training etc that I was aware of I'm not sure it's highly relevant to the role.

For myself this was not the role for me, but this came down a lot to personal preference of the sort of work I want to be doing and should not be entirely reflective of the company itself. Engineering consultancy is not for me I want to do something more computer oriented and technical.

There was a huge social scene in the office, bowling, movies, pub Fridays. It's an incredibly social office/ area and anyone was invited and included which was definitely one of the best things about the role. If anything there was too much social opportunities, I mean who actually likes bowling.

As the area was near London it was moderately expensive to live (but not as expensive as London) and the price of socialising was equivalent. You'd rarely pay less than a fiver for a pint. I'm not sure if the job role pay reflected that as much as it might've done if it was in London ?

Nightlife was available if sought after. Incredibly good pub scene and loads of bars/ restaurants available. Absolutely lovely area and opportunities for multiple forms of nightlife/socialisation whether healthy or unhealthy so this was definitely a perk of the role that I enjoyed and would recommend highly as a positive thing.

There were lots of opportunities to get involved in things. Cambridge is a very healthy active area so there were opportunities to get involved in loads of sport etc. I know women at the office who took art classes and poetry classes. I myself got into loads of extracurricular activities.