Industrail Placement Review

As far as work goes, I enjoyed succeeding at the different levels and job roles of the placement, subsequently being given more responsibility as the placement went on.

Very much so, the placement involves several different job roles in which you are given the responsibility of a permanent member of staff working in this job.

I was given a limited amount of on the job training in the first three months of my placement, as for my second two months in store I was given no training what so ever, yet still expected to perform to the same standard as a fully trained assistant manager.

When working in store, I was always busy. One of Aldi's main KPIs is productivity, so as you can imagine you are pushed to work at full capacity when physically working in the store team. Over the festive period, work load obviously increases, I personally worked 13 hour days with one day off per week as an Area Manager. Although this may sound daunting, you are working in a real life retailer around the busiest time of year, therefore this is the best way to experience what the job entails.

Although I will not directly use any of the skills I have learned when on placement in my final year of study, I feel the placement has matured me as a person. Taking myself out of student life for a year and working fifty hours per week has changed my priorities and given structure to my working and studying life which I shall carry back to university with me.

The atmosphere was very corporate, having said that there was always someone I could ask for guidance on anything.

At the beginning of the placement we were given a week by week overview of the 52 week placement. This remained the same until we arrived at head office when we given a different plan in order to split the group of IPs in order to give us more actual contact time in each department. The plan again changed slightly, as I missed out on working in some departments in order to carry out important audits. As well as this, some departments I worked in had not prepared for me and subsequently this resulted in me having to do a lot of watching.

I think Aldi invested highly in me, arranging for me to see every aspect of the business as possible as well as giving me access to most things an Area Manager has access to such as company cars and so on. The time and effort that went into ensuring I had the most comprehensive overview as possible will not have been an easy thing to arrange, therefore I feel as though the business did invest intently in my development.

Although I have enjoyed many aspects of the placement year and would recommend the organisation to graduates, I do not feel as though retail is the right industry for me.

Within the working environment I got on well with fellow IPs, however we did not socialise out side of work.

Out of the £1,650 salary per month after tax, I spent £1,000 on rent, bills, car insurance, fuel and food.

I lived in Newcastle, enough said