Placement student - chemical engineering Review

A mix of some mundane tasks and some tasks with lots of responsibility, not very much in between. There was some scope for developing your own projects, and other members of staff do really appreciate it when you put effort into work that will help them.

Friendly people are definitely in the majority, although it does take a couple of months of people seeing your face around to really feel like a part of the family.

Support was available on request, my line manager did a very good job in structuring the placement, my one criticism would be that many of the management (including my line manager) are very busy and hence quite hard to pin down.

Neither too much nor too little work. I was kept busy with a mixture of low and high responsibility jobs. I only had to come in early or stay late on a very infreqeunt basis.

I was a critical part of a few projects that were worth quite a sizeable amount of money to the company. There are definitely oppurtunities to make your mark at the company here, and I've been involved in plenty of jobs that have provided me with invaluable business and engineering experience. The pressure never got to be too much and there was always a safety net in place and people to consult if certain jobs were becoming to difficult or time consuming.

The most valuable skills were those I picked up myself during the placement. The placement gives a strong stimulus to improve your organisational skills. My research skills also benefitted imensely from the problem solving nature of the projects I was undertaking. Not very much in the way of formal training took place apart from a lean sigma yellow belt qualification, an internationally recognised and highly sought after qualification.

Welcoming friendly people, if I ever needed help they would normally make time for me.

It was well structured and set up so that I was responsible for almost everything I did.

I was fortunate to undertake a lean sigma yellow belt qualification; the majority of the training however seems to be reserved for people with full time positions in the company, which is understandable enough.

The majority of chemical engineers who come to work for the company are put on the graduate training programme with the intention of sending them down the path of becoming a shift operations manager. People have differing opinions on the role of a SOM, but 40k (-ish) 2 years out of uni isn't bad.

Good, but we were pretty spread apart so it was sometimes difficult

Cheap.

The nearby city was big and safe.

See above