Quality And Reliability Engineer Review

The experience itself has been very enjoyable, the team at Vauxhall are extremely friendly and make the place feel welcoming.

At the start of the year, when you do a presentation called 'Who Am I' to senior management, I presented that one of the aims for the year for me was to become 'indispensable' to the team. I feel quite proud to say this has been confirmed by having the contract extended. The team has voiced their views on the importance of the work carried out by myself and how important it was. Especially being involved in root causing, it is the first step in investigations.

Very simple to answer that question, my manager from the start said 'it's always better to ask than guess, and even if you need to ask me ten or twenty times about the same thing, I am here for that'. He has certainly lived up to his claim!

Work life is work life. Some days are busier than others. As a general rule oh thumb, never twiddled my thumbs! There is always work, and if I run short of my normal duties I'd ask other managers if they wanted help and always found myself busy and doing something.

Being a core team member, the responsibility is high. As mentioned in the previous answer, being involved in root causing of defects, your feedback is crucial to everyone in the business to understand the problems seen in the field. On top of that running individual investigations to improve internal quality metrics, being trusted with making changes to the manufacturing process all add to the responsibility.

University teaches you the academic side of things, the theory behind everything but not how to glue it all together. Working in an international organisation, where there is interaction between levels and with other companies and businesses you develop personally and professionally. You expand on many skills like prioritising, organisation, time keeping, and most importantly, dealing with people.

The people in the office are great. The atmosphere is of a 'one big family', everyone is on first name terms and there is very little divide between ladder levels. You can go and chat with the managers as equals especially as the company has an open office policy. There was a lot of community projects that the company gets involved like going to schools and teaching them about engineering, manufacturing and businesses.

Vauxhall has a large team organising the student placements, and is very well set up to do so.

The training was team based, so if the 'permanent' team members got it, so did the undergraduates. In fact there was more training given to the undergraduates than the permanent employees! From specialised problem solving, to basic and advanced Excel skills.

I will definitely be applying for a graduate job at Vauxhall. The placement has opened a huge door for me, and there are many perks that the permanent staff get like a company car scheme which would make motoring for a starting graduate much easier.

Having commuted from home, I did miss out on some of the social life. But even so the events put on by the main team and in groups has been excellent. The team in the Luton plant has been very close and we became a little family of our own.

Average, depends where you want to go really, every town in England has cheap and expensive places to go!

Nightlife was good, the company organised outings were the best!

Yes, there are community projects where you can help out in schools, local businesses in many ways. For example going to a school specialising in providing extra support to their pupils asked for help with re-landscaping their garden. A group of employees spent a day planting trees, bushes and putting a new walkway in.