Commercial Intern Review

My internship was on the Commercial scheme, and it was a really interesting insight into the business. It took a while to get into, but by the end it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Everybody was really welcoming, and they all really care about what they do.

There was the opportunity to operate independently a lot, but managers and other team members were all approachable and willing to help.

Overall the work load was about right. The only issue was that there were some periods where it was quite light and others were it was quite heavy. But it's not a matter of twiddling your thumbs or just copying, you are given meaningful and challenging projects.

This was something that the Commercial scheme was really good for. With an intern group project on the side of daily tasks there was an opportunity to suggest changes and do day-to-day jobs that would be expected if you worked there full time.

It isn't strictly useful for university, but as I study management it was interesting to see some of the internal operations of a big firm. More useful were the skills for later life; such as Excel, presentations and just working in an office environment.

The whole culture of Rolls-Royce was friendly and welcoming, my office in particular had some quite senior people in it but even they were happy to talk to the interns and it was a great place to work.

The Commercial program seemed to be one of the most well planned, compared to some other ones like engineering and customer management. We had lots of introductory sessions, a group project and a business game as well as line-managers and graduate buddies to help us get started straight away. Even small things like having a working laptop straight away were great.

The whole ten weeks is a chance to develop an understanding of what it would be like to work for Rolls-Royce, so in that sense it is an obvious investment from the company to spend time teaching the interns what it would be like to work there. There probably could be some more formal training on the IT systems etc, but you pick up a lot of skills along the way.

At the end of the scheme you'll find out if they want to offer you a place on the graduate scheme. But this is very much a two-way process, you need to know if it's the right job for you and if you mind moving to Derby! I was lucky enough to get on the scheme, but it took me about 8 of the weeks to know if I wanted to do it.

All the summer interns live in Derby University halls so it's easy to get to know people. This is especially useful to meet people based elsewhere in Rolls-Royce, not just the interns you see on your scheme every day.

Derby may not have that much going for it, but it is cheap!

Nightlife isn't a big deal for me, but the few times I did go "out" in Derby suggest you might want to make the cab journey to Nottingham if you want a really good time. But saying this, it is cheap and the summer interns all tend to go out together so its a good laugh.

The gym is right by the Rolls Royce site which is really useful. A lot of my colleagues joined sports teams, like rugby and rowing, so if you want to get stuck in it is easy to do.