Industrial Placement Student Review

The placement was very enjoyable, you were given alot of responsibility and trust, there was a great atmosphere within the office and between the other Placement Students

Very valued, everyone treats you equally and has the utmost confidence in you to deliver any work that you have been given.

Support was always there, the managers always made themselves open to talk if you had any concerns, and national grid have a student development program in place in order to develop you and push you on your objectives.

Some days I was very busy and had to do 12 hour days, others there was not much to do, the work very much came in peaks and troughs.

I was always given as much responsibility as I was willing to take, as i said before everyone in National Grid has the utmost confidence in you.

I developed various skills while working at national grid, such as great IT skills from doing a lot of work on excell, presentation skills from having to deliver various presentations throughout the year. Further increasing my organisation skills from practical everything I do, from organising events to organising my inbox. At the start of my placement I was asked what skills I would like to improve on and by the end I feel this has sufficently been accomplished.

It varies between offices, some were very hardworking and social events were quite sparse, while others the fun never really stopped

In some aspects it was organised well, such as the student development programs, other aspects not as much, as I feel we should have received a larger induction into the firm so we fully understand its processes, as National Grid itself is very complicated.

They invested in us well, such as a few training days and presentation evenings, but if you compare us to the graduates there training and development was 10 times better.

Due to the firm currently cutting costs, there will no longer be a sponsership opportunity that was originally promised, further they are taking on less graduates than usual and we still have to go to a graduate assessment centre, so although the assessment centre is early the likely chance of receiving a graduate job isnt too likely.

Yes most the placement students were fairly outgoing and I got to know all of them and some of them I'm sure I will stay friends with for a very long time.

I lived in Leamington Spa, so the rent was quite expensive around £400 a month and generally living costs were not too bad.

It was ok to start but generally deteriorated, it was due to Leamington only having a few proper clubs, there are loads of pubs there as well although no big beer gardens :/ birmingham isn't too far but the costs associated to get to birmingham isn't really worth it. Cheapest pint is around £2 in the Duke apart from that it averages around £3 a pint.

There was quite a few opportunities within networking days, I know there was football every week you could even join the golf society, so there was quite a few.