Summer Student Review

I really enjoyed the office atmosphere, everyone was very warm and welcoming and very keen to help me settle in and feel part of the team. The work I was given was generally enjoyable, and often varied, if not always novel or ground breaking. Overall it was a fairly enjoyable placement, if not a seat of your pants style roller-coaster.

I most certainly felt like family almost as soon as I arrived at the office. It was not the biggest company office, but i would have to say that it is probably the most friendly. Colleagues clearly wanted me to enjoy my placement, and were often proactive in sourcing work for me to do. They also made it clear to me that my contribution to the project was valuable and worthwhile

Normally I was given sufficient, if sparse, support, with my manager and supervisors trusting me sufficiently to complete the tasks I was set without having to be watched over and supported at every single step. My manager had to leave for secondment towards the end of my placement, which obviously was not ideal.

I was kept at a fairly good balance of busyness for most of the time. There was normally plenty of work to do in the office, and the staff were usually generous and forthcoming with work for me to do whenever it was asked for. Sometimes there wasnt quite as much for me to do as I might have liked, but overall it was quite a good balance

I was trusted to get on with my own work with quite a large degree of responsibility. Once the scope of work that I had been asked to do had been laid out, I was given the responsibility to get on with the work, and to see it through to its completion, That is not to say I was alone, on the contrary help was forthcoming whenever requested.

Not many new skills developed

I thought that the overall atmosphere in the office was really nice. It was a very warm and friendly office with so many nice people who were always willing to help if needed, or provide good conversation in breaks. The atmosphere in the office was fun and relaxed, but not at the expense of a professional and productive nature.

Fairly good, though a little naively in places

The company was very happy to invest time in training me and encouraged me to spend time in personal training were it was needed to help me improve my performance and productivity. They were kind enough not to take a very short term view, and promoted learning and development above short term productivity.

I have been fortunate to have had a good working relationship with the company, and future employment prospects with them look very bright and promising. I expect that I will be able to work for them at the conclusion of my studies. In addition to this I would be keen to take up a job offer from this company.

Unfortunately as the office is situated in the middle of nowhere, or maybe more accurately, on the far edge of nowhere, the social scene was really quite lacking. In addition as it was not a very large office there were only a very few other fellow placement students. There were some office socials run, which were good.

This one is difficult to rate accurately on the star system, so I have gone straight down the middle with 5 stars. The cost of living in the area was pretty cheap, which was nice. However the flip side of that is that there was basically nothing for miles around so socialising was also pretty scant.

Non existent

There were some good activities to get involved with outside of work, and the flexible time arrangement was very useful in allowing you the opportunity to make the most of these options. However the range of activities to get involved in was quite limited to some specific areas, and if your interests did not align with that then, the ability to use flexi time is a bit redundant