manufacturing intern Review

I was given a real life job and treated the same as any other employee, this meant that a lot of the work I did was not hugely exciting or enjoyable however I did get a good level of job satisfaction from the work that I did and I was able to feel proud about how I was contributing to my team. some of the work I did was genuinely interesting and fun but there were also days where I had to work through some very boring tasks.

from my colleagues that I worked with day in and day out I was told on multiple occasions that I was doing good work and that my contributions were greatly valued by the team. They treated me with respect and trusted me to do my work to a high standard. that being said, from the corporate side of Eaton I found that while they trumpet themselves for valuing their employees in practise they are just the same as every large corporation.

I have absolutely no complaints with the support I was given. as interns we were given multiple training days throughout the year to help us with our work and from my line manager and the other senior team members I was given any guidance and assistance that I requested and when I wanted to undertake a project of my own choosing I was given full endorsement to do so.

In this regard I do not think my experience was typical of the internship scheme as a whole. I had lots of different day to day tasks that could vary in their scope and scale as well as lots of sudden ad-hoc work so I could go through periods where I had very little work to do and then have weeks at a time where I was working flat out with far more work than I could ever conceivably hope to do.

As I have previously mentioned, I was treated the same as any other employee in my team and therefore I was given lots of responsibility and was trusted to complete my work to a high standard. I was given a lot of work that was either vital to the business (either in terms of scale or urgency) or work that was important in terms of safety/functionality of the parts we were selling. often the only limiting factor was that there were some tasks I was not legally allowed to perform.

this is difficult to determine as while some of the things I have learnt will be directly transferable to my degree, for the most part the things I have developed are the 'soft' skills that will help with my general working practises and how I approach tasks. things such as presentation skills, the ability to organise and lead meetings, time management etc.

the general atmosphere was very mixed. I worked in a small office separate from the main office and as such it was a tightly knit team in the office. we had lots of changes to the people in that office due to some organisational re-structuring. A lot of them were great people who were fun to work with and others less so. there were also a lot of frustrations in the office due to our job being supporting the shop floor but being understaffed meant that a lot of the staff felt frustrated with the upper management.

from the side of the program manager the internship was run completely smoothly, all the training days and the like were run like clockwork without a single hiccup. from the on site perspective, at the start due to me being the first intern on site in that role there was a long adjustment period where they were not expecting me to have some of the skills I had already and I actually got through all the 'starter' work they had for me a lot quicker than they expected but that soon levelled off.

the company invested a great deal of time and money in organising training days for me. they also were willing to stop and train me up on anything I showed an interest with or if I needed help. in this respect I was never once told no. when I wanted to learn how to operate certain pieces of machinery they had someone work with me on my projects until I was capable of doing it myself and when I wanted to learn about some processes they allowed me to take time out of work to sit with an operator and learn it.

In all honesty I don't think I am a good fit for the company, while lots of my friends on the internship are looking to get a job later I am looking for a different kind of company to work for, at least in the near future. this isn't due to any issues with how the company is run, more just a difference in what I want from a job and what the company would give me.

for other interns who were all based at the same site I have heard there was a decent social life however as I was the only one on my site I didn't interact with them all that much though when the opportunity arose we did have some good nights out. as for colleagues I commuted from quite a way away so I never had the opportunity to go and interact socially with them.

I actually commuted from my university to work as they weren't all that far apart so I wouldn't know

see above

for other sites there were lots of activities for people to get involved in outside of work however as far as I am aware that did not exist at my site.