General Systems Summer Intern Review

As a company, they felt really geared up for interns/graduates and I felt very welcomed. The work I undertook was interesting and the support I received from my supervisor was really fantastic. The experience gained from this placement has been of real value and I feel much more prepared for my career after university.

I felt as though I was treated as a valued member of the team and would often be involved in discussion with colleagues on particular problems and gave input at weekly meeting.

I worked closely with my supervisor on a day to day basis. I always felt as though I could speak to him regarding any issues I had and was given guidance not just on the work I was undertaking but also the bigger picture of working in a large company and what to expect if I was to potentially take up a full time role after university.

I was given a stretch project which lasted the length of my internship which, whilst it wasn't crucial to the team, I felt as though it contributed to their work and in particular it helped to increase the efficiency of my supervisor's work. This was supplemented with one off tasks here and their which were required to assist the team and was a nice change of pace.

The stretch assignment was my main project and I was very much trusted to work on it as I liked with rough time deadlines; though I would regularly ask colleagues for advice and show where I was up to.

In terms of employment experience I feel it has been priceless. Being able to use the skills and experiences as evidence in interviews for graduate jobs has been a fantastic asset. These same qualities have also been useful to me as a person; being in a big company, seeing how it works, how to behave and work collaboratively in an industry environment is something which will stand me in good stead for my future career.

My colleagues were all very friendly, happy to help and I would regularly have conversations with other departments within the office for both work and general lunch time chat. However, the office itself wasn't very vibrant, it was quite an older demographic of people and it felt as though a lot of the employees were slightly set in their ways and happy to turn up in the morning, sit behind their desk and work their way through jobs without collaborating or engaging with others.

I felt as though the company were very geared up to host interns. The initial induction went like clockwork, was very informative and answered all the questions I had. Throughout the placement I had work to do and had both a mid-term review and an end of placement review; both of which were structured in the same manner as if I was a graduate employee and I was rated against the same competencies and levels expected of graduates. There were also a handful of activities outside of office work where I was given tours of the various facilities and got to see some of the work which other interns were doing.

Whilst I didn't receive any specific training, I did receive an EAL qualification for my summer internship which was determined from my performance in the mid-term and final review sessions.

At the end of placement review I achieved an EAL (http://www.eal.org.uk/) qualification grade 'Outstanding' for work undertaken during the internship. This meant that I was able to skip the initial interview stages of the graduate application process and invited straight to the assessment centre.

On a day to day basis the summer interns would regularly meet for lunch. I made some good friends during this time whom I'm still in contact with and in general they were a good crop of like-minded individuals.

I live in the North Greater Manchester area and was therefore able to live from home and perform an hours commute to work.

Only went out into Preston once, was fine.

The intern team organised one night out in preston. At the start of the internship there were grand plans to organise events such as go-karting, paintballing, bowling etc but this never came to fruition.