IT Intern Review

I really enjoyed my placement year at Mattel. The IT department were a great team to be part. The culture at Mattel is great. There are loads of fun events all year such as fairs and quizes and loads of opportunities to get involved with raising money for charity alongside your day job.

I felt very valued by my colleagues throughout my year at Mattel. I could see that the work I was doing was actually useful for the company. I felt more like full time employee rather than an intern due to how integrated I was with the IT department and in projects.

Throughout my time at Mattel my manager was very supportive of the work I was doing. My manager was very approachable and I felt as I could always ask questions when I needed to. I would have weekly catch ups in the diary with my manager. As well as this HR would schedule in regular meetings with all the interns to check in on us to make sure we were okay.

Due to the main project I was working on throughout my placement I was very busy most of the time which I enjoyed. The workload was the right balance which meant I would not get stressed by it. There was also lots of support so I was able to handle the workload.

My manager gave me a lot of responsibility throughout my placement on various projects which I really enjoyed. Due to the amount of responsibility my manager gave me I learned a lot of skills in regards to IT project management. This was great because these skills have been very useful in my final year of university.

I think that the skills I have been a massive help in my final year of university. I have learnt to be a lot more organised and my time management skills have vastly improved. Placement year taught me how to keep on top of my work which has been a great help in my final year.

The atmosphere was very fun at times. HR organised a lot of fun events throughout the year. The charity committee organised a lot of fun themed events such as Bake off and Christmas fairs which was a great hit. Most people at Mattel are very social and there's always lots going on.

The work placement year was very well organised. At the start of the year HR clearly explained how the placement year would work. They gave us clear visibility about Intern projects we would be working on and they regularly would catch up with us to ensure all the interns were doing fine.

At the start of our internship HR organised a lot of training and development sessions from people in the company and external speakers. Mattel also provides employees with a Linkedin learning account which was great for a Computer Science student. There was loads of programming courses and various other technical courses.

As the company is a US company there are not many opportunities available in the IT department in the UK. I would say future employment prospects with Mattel are not very great as the IT team in the UK is small and there is rarely opportunities available within the team.

There was a good social scene amongst the placement students. There was a big group of interns and we all got on very well with each other. We would chat with each other often throughout the day and eat lunch together. Sometimes we would go out together too which was fun.

Maidenhead did not really have much to offer in terms on nightlife so we never went out in maidenhead. However Reading and Uxbridge are not too far from Maidenhead. In Reading there's loads of bars and clubs to go to and in Uxbridge there's a fun club and a few bars.