Engineering Intern Review

I applied for and received an offer for the General Engineering placement year. The team I was allocated was at the complete other end of the spectrum to what I talked about in my interview, and was in the last area I would have picked in the company. At the end of the internship and after reflection of my projects, I realised that the tasks I had been given were not General/Design Engineering related, and instead were more akin to Manufacturing Engineering/Project Management. I was given an opportunity to spend 1-2 days a week on another project, but this did not offset the low satisfaction and motivation due to my project allocation. HR did not do much to help apart from tell me to talk to my line manager, who explained that the project I was doing was business-critical, yet apparently not critical enough to have a full-time qualified employee working on it, instead of me - a year-long intern. It was a very long, demotivating, year; and I think interns should not expect to be given exciting engineering tasks. It seems like they are given the unpopular projects that current graduates have not chosen.

I was given responsibility in my work and expected to deliver milestones. The work was deemed as business-critical, my work felt valued, but there was not much social interaction between the team.

I had weekly 1-1 sessions with my supervisor and they were available to help most of the time when I asked for it. Other team members were also happy to help when I asked. It seems most people in the company are willing to help you if you explain what it is you're doing and why it is beneficial to the company.

The first few months of the internship were very slow as I did not understand enough about the project to be able to do any real work for it. The nature of it being a mostly management/manufacturing project within an area without any knowable way forward, meant that I could not help with any analysis work until later on.

As a year-long intern, I was given the lead on one of the two projects that an extended development graduate was originally given by our line manager. This meant a high level of responsibility from the start.

The work and skills I developed were not that related to my degree as most of my work was management/manufacturing focused, and I am studying for an aerospace engineering degree. I do not see any real connection between the work I did during the internship and what I have been learning at university. If I had been given a project that was more engineering focused and aligned with the placement scheme I had applied for, this might have been different.

Busy and loud. The office was a big open floor of 100-200 people sitting on AGILE desks.

Apart from 2 training sessions in my first week, I was effectively dropped into the team I had been allocated and that was it. No further support from HR. My team and project I had been allocated to did not align either with the placement scheme I had applied for and expected to be working in.

I was given permission by my supervisor to attend company training courses that were relevant to my work, I had to justify why they were though first, at the end of the year I had maybe attended 7 days worth of training. There was not much on the job training from my line manager or other team members.

Despite the extremely negative experience of my internship, there is no doubt that there is interesting work for graduates/engineers within the company. However, due to my bad experience during the placement, I am not in a position where RR are an attractive option to return to. If I had been given a placement project that aligned with the scheme I had applied for and the topics I had discussed during my interview, then no doubt I would be more enthusiastic to return.

Fellow placement students and graduates organised socials and events via the intern and graduate network within the company.

Low cost of living and socialising in central Derby - not unexpected.

Lots of pubs, not very many clubs. Having been a student in a major city this wasn't such a good change.

Yes but not necessarily due to RR involvement.