Industrial Placement Review

I thoroughly enjoyed this placement. The amount of responsibility and autonomy given to you is immense, you would struggle to receive the same levels on any other placement. Overall Aldi is a fantastic environment for you to grow as an individual.

In stores you are helping to optimise the smooth running of a multimillion pound business and constantly receiving feedback on what can be improved. In Regional Office you are working on live projects that will help colleagues in stores. In both aspects colleagues really value your help.

At Aldi you don't have someone holding your hand through the whole process. This is not the Aldi way. You learn and develop from hands on experience and making mistakes, not just shadowing management. However, support and guidance is always there if you need it and reviewing your performance occurs regularly.

There is always something more that can be done....

Sometimes you have to pinch yourself at how much responsibility you are given. Within 2 weeks you will have keys to your first store and starting to run shifts. How much responsibility you are given obviously depends on how you are performing. You may be lucky enough to run a store or even an area!

The skills I have developed are mainly people management based, which will assist me to a certain extent with future studies but will mainly assist me beyond this.

If you are looking for an office environment where it is beers in the City after work, then you will not find this here! However, when I was in the office I was fortunate to be with 5+ PAM (Project Area Managers). Therefore we did indulge in racket sports on a Monday evening and the general atmosphere was fun.

10 out of 10. On your first day you are handed a plan for the next 12 months. You know exactly what you are doing and where this will be occurring. When I arrived at Regional Office for the final 4 months I received a revised plan that went into a lot more detail. This set out the project briefs that I would be undertaking in the next 4 months in each department. Everything had been thought of in this plan, it really put me at ease!

Your training and development is heavily down to your mentor. Luckily I had 2 experienced Area Managers as my mentors, so my development was monitored on a weekly basis, with feedback being constant.

Currently I have 5 weeks left with the company and am unsure on future employment prospects. The exit process is completely down to the Regional Managing Director. Some regions offer IP's jobs before they leave, whilst others send a letter after the IP has left. I know this is something that the Aldi Academy are looking to resolve to gain consistency across all regions.

I was the only placement student in this region.

There are limited opportunities comparable to other companies. However you can still find yourself doing charity events or sports with your colleagues.