Purchasing Undergraduate Review

My Placement was enjoyable, I worked in a great department with lots of friendly people that I got on really well with.

I spent my year working in a fairly close-knit. After a few months, I felt like a valued member of the team, and was being asked by other members of the team to help them on different projects and tasks

This did seem to differ as per who your manager was, but I can't say a bad word about my manager. She gave me a large project on my first day and after completing it, I was given bigger tasks with more responsibility which led to exposure to senior people in many different departments.

There was always something to do.

I was given a lot of responsibility. After starting in late june 2012, I was conducting supplier negotiations, covering for a member of my team while she was on summer holiday in the late august. Showing I was capable of this, meant that more and more responsibility was given to me by my manager and senior manager.

I started at the same time as a full graduate in my team, and my manager managed to get me on all the same training courses that each graduate had. This means that even thought I am an undergraduate intern it means that I have had access to thousands of pounds worth of training that any full time employee has access to. This has made the transition into the job easy as I had a large amount of training in the first 4-5 months and then after that I have just been using the skills learnt in my day to day role. This will also be beneficial for my return to university as I have had training courses in things like project management which I will be studying when back at university next year.

This is dependant on which team you are in but overall there is a relaxed friendly atmosphere in the whole department. My team in particular is really good fun to be a part of.

It took a bit of time at the beginning to get all the correct access to computer systems and key card for entry to offices i needed, but I saw it take people starting as contractors, and not part of any grad scheme or undergrad scheme, much longer to get the required access.

The company invested a huge amount in my training, which made me feel like they were investing in my future. I always have the feeling that I am a valid member of the team and am never just being given projects to keep me quiet, rather work that really needs to be done.

I am yet to have my final assessment centre to see if I have a graduate offer before returning to university, but my manager and senior manager have both said that I have their full support in coming back on the graduate scheme which I think means a lot.

out of the 14 year long placement students for 2012/13, I live in a house of 5 next door to a house of 4. This has been excellent because there is always someone around and always something going on. We all get on really well together, and I have made some fantastic friends this year.

We chose to live in leamington spa, because it is half way between the two Jaguar Land Rover sites that we could have been working in. It's not the cheapest of areas but there are definitely cheap areas to live in if that is a priority. I know that a lot of the summer placement students who started when we started our year long placements lived in a halls of residence in Coventry that was cheaper on the whole than leamington spa or warwick.

With leamington housing students from warwick university, the nightlife was excellent. There are loads of good places to go out and its student prices for the most part.

My team had a few team building days and half days that were good to get involved in. There was also weekly 5-a-side football in my department that was a good laugh. I also entered a 10k obstacle course in nottingham with a group of grads that was a really good day out