Placement Year Review at National Instruments

The Role

Role Description

Giving technical support to customers using NI hardware and software in engineering and scientific environments via telephone, email and online forums. This takes up most of you time in the first 6 months and about half of your time in the second six months. Other tasks include: editing and publishing Case Studies, Project Work, Teaching, Presenting to collegues, customer and management, travelling to events such as University careers fairs and The Gadget Show Live.

1. To what extent did you enjoy your work placement or internship?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

Working as technical support could get a little repetative but new and interesting challenges would always arise. Huge amount of oppertunity to do many other things that you would not usually encounter when working in technical support.

2. To what extent did you feel valued by your colleagues?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

The interns at NI are given equal responsibilities to full time qualified engineers so you are valued like any other employee- which is highly. The NI office is a great place to work in (as their "top 50 places to work" badge will tell you.) Very friendly people to the extent that it is not unusual to spend 5-10 minutes casually chatting to the head of UK operations.

3. To what extent were you given support and guidance by management/your supervisor(s)?

★★★★★★★★★★

Rated 10/10

couldn't have asked for better support, NI put a lot of effort into developing your skills. This was the highlight of my placement

4. How busy were you on a daily basis?

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Rated 6/10

Most of the time very busy, every now and then too busy. But you learn the most from those times. Be prepared to put in some extra un-paid hours but you'll want to do it and you'll get a lot out of it.

5. How much responsibility were you given during your placement?

★★★★★★★★★☆

Rated 9/10

Varied from week to week. You communicate with anything from 4 to 10 customers a day over the phone or by email and you have to deliver good service for them- that is the lowest responsibility. An example of the highest is if you get the opertunity to teach a course to a class of engineers each of whom has paid over £1000 to attend

6. To what extent did/will the skills you developed, and training you received, assist you in your degree studies and beyond?

★★★★★★★★★☆

Rated 9/10

Many skills for life learnt/improved. I was able to develop my presentation, technical and communication skills greatly. I am now a certified associate LabVIEW developer and have experiance working on an engineering project from initial idea to final presentation- very useful for final year project

The Organisation

7. What was the general atmosphere in your office?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

very relaxed office, really fun at times- a great atmosphere. (They have a foozeball table!)

8. How well organised was the overall work placement or internship set up?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

training was very good and the job roll was clear. They have had interns for several years now and currently employ 9-13 new interns each year so they have a well developed scheme (Engineering Leadership Program)

9. In terms of personal training and development, to what extent did the company or firm invest in you?

★★★★★★★★★★

Rated 10/10

As mentioned before, a lot of effort is put into developing your skills.

10. What were the perks on your work placement?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

• Sports and Social Club

11. How appealing are future employment prospects within the organisation?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

Will apply for a job there without a doubt.

Other Information

12. Was there a good social scene amongst any fellow placement students/colleagues?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

half of my department was made up of other interns from university and most of the full time employees were very sociable as well so the social scene amoungst collegues and across departments was very good. Generally played football every Thursday after work in the summer. Often played squash or golf with collegues and night out every Friday and/or Saturday

13. What was the cost of living and socialising in the area you worked in?

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

Rated 4/10

cost of living is relatively expensive, I paid £320/310 rent a month, a pint is about £3.50.

14. What was the Nightlife like in the area you worked?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

lots of Bars and Pubs, only one fairly dilapidated club. But Reading is not far. One of the best nights out of the year was a road trip to Cardiff

15. Were there many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work?

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Rated 8/10

Plenty, lots of sport as mentioned above not to mention the thrills of Crafty Craft! (Company boat race down the Kennet.) Theres a pool hall that we used to go to fairly often and a pub quiz.

In addition to these questions, is there any extra information you would like to leave about your experiences on your work placement that other students may be interested in?

Work hard, play hard- saying this in my interview may have helped me get the placement because it is a bit of an unofficial motto for many NI employees, expect to be challenged but also expect to have some great times. The one aspect that other placements may do better is offer greater experiance in a specific part of the engineering industary. Working at NI gives you some experiance of many parts of the engineering industary and develops your soft skills as well as your technical ones. Overall I would rate this placement as 9/10

Review 6/7 for National Instruments

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