Student Support and Project Engineer Review

I thoroughly enjoyment my placement, I was given a lot of responsibility with project work, as well as the opportunity to go abroad to see the implementation of the project go live, I gained experience with communications by working on support throughout the year and I enhanced a lot of useful technical skills, including SQL, C#, HTML and CSS.

I felt very valued by my colleagues. Despite being on a student placement, and therefore on the lowest rung of the company, I have always felt like a member of the team as I was treated equal to other employees, such as recently joined graduates as well as other members of staff who have been here for many years.

I’ve had various managers/supervisors in my time here as depending on what projects you are working on, you will have a certain manager, and all of them are very forthcoming with guidance. Even if your supervisor is unavailable, anyone around you would be more than happy to help you if you ask them.

When working on support, there will be quiet periods where customers aren’t having any issues, but the support manager is very helpful in finding you work elsewhere, be it from projects or somewhere else, for you to do if you’re running out of work/starting to get bored. When working on projects, you have a more balanced workload.

I was given a great deal of responsibility, considering I was a student. This ranged from investigating and resolving customers’ issues on my own, investigating issues that I’ve discovered on my own, as well as having a large stake of the workload of the various projects that I’ve been working on.

The SQL knowledge I've learnt will definitely help me with any database courses at university and beyond. As mentioned above I’ve also gained a lot of communication skills on the support desk. One of the most useful skills I’ve developed is getting into the working routine, which should definitely help with my motivation to get work done at university.

The general atmosphere is great, everybody is warm, friendly and relaxed. You are able to approach anyone at any time for anything and they will be happy to help. There’s a real social side to the office, where everybody gets on with everybody else and are always up for a good laugh.

The placement was very well set up, we had a very thorough 8 week training to make sure we were more than prepared when we officially started our work.

As above, we had a very thorough 8 week training which included training on the configuration and modifications of our software, as well as technical training such as SQl and VB/C# programming. This started from the basics to make sure everybody, no matter what previous knowledge they’ve had, became trained up to the same level.

The majority of the full time employees that currently work here used to be on placement courses.

There is definitely a good social scene as the majority of new placement students/graduates live together, so it is easy to build up a good social base. As an example, when I started, there were 4 of us placement students and 4 graduates. 6 out of us found a place with each other (over different houses). As we spent 8 weeks together training, we all got to know each other extremely well. As you start to get to know the rest of the employees, you will make lots more friends and the meet ups become more common.

Crawley is a cheap area to live in. Accommodation costs are more than reasonable and evenings/nights out are fairly priced too.

There’s not much in terms of night life around Crawley, there’s a couple of main clubs (recently upgraded from one!) as well as a few bars/pubs. Despite this, you’re still able to have a good night out. If you wanted more options, there’s always the option to go to either London or Brighton which you can get direct trains to and aren’t too far away.

Yes, there's opportunities such as 5-a-side football, or some of us meet up to play squash at a local gym before work.