Human Factors Undergraduate Review

I often felt like a work experience student with no real work. There was often no work for me so felt like a spare part and wondered why they had employed me. When I was given some real work it was interesting and often involved trips out of the office.

They were really friendly and looked after me throughout the placement and gave great careers advice, they just weren't very good at delegating work.

I had 3 different managers throughout my placement, which wasn't very good. My first boss left 3 weeks after I started, then the next one left after 8 months, then I had a third one for my last 3 months. This was unsettling and they couldn't really give me much support as they were still getting used to their new role as a manager. The rest of the team tried to help as much as they could, but they were in the same situation.

Bored a lot of the time. Many weeks I asked for work and it was met with the response 'we have nothing for you'. Made me question why they had employed me. This was partly due to the constant shake ups with the management of the team.

I was given a report to write in the last 2 months which I had sole responsibility for but the rest of the time I was hardly given an responsibility.

I learnt quite a lot about Human Factors and the jobs the rest of the team had had over the years. Talking to them was very useful to be able to share their knowledge and I learnt how to use tools such as Microsoft Project, Visio etc that could help in the future.

The HF group is very sociable and would often go to the pub for lunch or meet up outside of work. The office environment was relaxed with a fairly young team.

HR set up the placement very well and I was assigned a buddy and a mentor. It was just my specific department that wasn't very organised in finding work for me.

All the new graduates and undergraduates go away for 4 days of team building and learning more about the company, which was excellent. There was also plenty of opportunities to go on courses that were relevant to your work.

They have already offered me a graduate job with a good salary and perks.

MBDA is predominantly a male dominated environment so a lot of the graduates/undergraduates went to the pub on a Thursday. It was personal choice as to whether you went along. I didn't really 'hang around' with the other placement people but spent more time with my team.

There are plenty of cheaper places to live but socialising is more expensive than some places as Bristol is a large city.

I believe the nightlife was good. Not really my scene but the other employees seemed to have some good nights out.

There wasn't anything organised by the company but some people choose to play sport together in their own time.