Estimating intern Review

Not a lot unfortunately. The company is huge, and from what I can gather, areas of the company are very different to one another, so it is a bit of a lottery as to how enjoyable one individual internship is. My internship left me feeling uninspired, unmotivated and generally pretty disappointed for a variety of reasons. It was extremely difficult to hide this and it affected how I felt outside of work. I very much doubt that my experiences were consistent with the majority of interns undertaking their internships at the same time as me, due to the vast differences between roles and areas in the company. In hindsight, I should have aired my thoughts and feelings earlier on in the internship, as they may have been addressed. This of course is a difficult thing to do as it is not an experience I'd had before, but in future, if faced with a similar situation, I will do it with less hesitation. It was a useful internship, chiefly for finding out and being able to justify what I do not want to do in the future. There were a couple of good days out, a visit to Glasgow for an informative, useful induction day, and an enjoyable end of internship event in Portsmouth, but I gained little pleasure from the day-job unfortunately.

This varied immensely between colleagues, but overall I can't say I felt overwhelmingly valued.

Managers would give me some of their time if I asked for it, but I really didn't feel very encouraged. The work carried out by the organisation is very complex, so trying to get up to speed can be overwhelming. I feel some managers I worked for were not particularly sympathetic to this, and quite often were not very clear (even when answering clarifying questions). There were a couple of people who were very helpful however, and really went out of their way to help me feel comfortable - a shame I didn't work with those people more during the internship.

Always had things to do, even if they were uninteresting and not adding a lot of value.

Not a lot, which is un-motivating and adds to a feeling of dissatisfaction. I appreciate that in a big organisation, working on a complex project, it is difficult to give genuine responsibility to an intern only there for 12 weeks. However I have previously completed a placement year, and a 6 week summer internship for an SME, and was given far more responsibility in both roles.

Didn't really have any proper training, but I feel my use of Microsoft Excel improved, my presentation of documents also got better, both of which will help me in the future. The internship wasn’t academically stimulating, and didn’t really relate to my degree in any way, but I wasn’t expecting it to.

Not great, most people were either, bored, stressed or fed up. There were however a few people I got on well with and enjoyed speaking to, which made the experience a bit nicer.

At a high level, it was set up quite well. The internship had been co-ordinated through a specialised training organisation that had organised a paperwork-heavy but well-structured review process, and also gave the internship a recognised accreditation. There were a couple of hiccups however, the most salient of which was being sent a contract telling me I was to be working at Combat Vehicles UK in Telford rather than Naval Ships in Bristol; I was a bit disappointed when I found out that this was a mistake and not a pleasant surprise (would have been nearer to home and in an area I'm more interested in but never mind)! There was also an approachable, professional early careers manager who was very good at co-ordinating an induction day in Glasgow on my first day where we looked round some ship yards and had a thorough overview of the organisation. However, when I arrived the following day for my first day at the office, I found out that my job was in 'Estimating', rather than 'Project Management' which I applied for. This wasn't necessarily a problem, but it would have been nice to have been aware of this before-hand, so I knew what to expect and didn't tell all my family, friends and ex-colleagues the wrong thing! This also gave me the impression that my work-load wasn't particularly well planned in advance, which unfortunately I still think to this day. However I do appreciate that the within the nature of the project I was working on, this may have been a difficult thing to achieve.

I spoke to a few people in different disciplines, the induction day in Glasgow, and end of internship event in Portsmouth were good too from that perspective. Not much else springs to mind other than that.

I went in to the internship expecting to be extremely keen on the graduate program. This has most certainly changed since, unfortunately. Different parts of the organisation will probably be very different so I will never say never; aircraft, combat vehicles and munitions are much more aligned to my interests, and procurement/purchasing is an area I would like to go in to. However, I would like to be in the Midlands after finishing university, and most of BAE System's activity is in the north or south of the country. Therefore the graduate scheme isn’t on the top of my list.

There were a few other interns on the same site (in different jobs to me), who were very nice and we met for lunch every day. There weren’t really any other social scenes though for me.

I lived with a relative and drove 40 miles each way to work so this isn't really applicable.

Didn't go out in Bristol during my internship so this is not really applicable, although I hear it is very good.

Only if organised between interns or something, nothing else.