Economic Analyst Review

My placement year at National Grid was a challenge which pushed my analysis skills and helped with my personal development in key areas such as communication and working in a team. The work which I completed was engaging as I found learning about the electricity network intriguing and this helped me find lots of enjoyment in my work.

I felt very valued by my colleagues during my time at National Grid as I was assigned several key projects to work on which would enhance my teams capability and were utilised by my team in their work and would continue to be used even after I had left the team.

As part of my placement I had weekly one to one meetings with my line manager and monthly one to one meetings with his manager to discuss my current work and to ask for any support or guidance in my tasks. I also was assigned a buddy upon joining National Grid who i could ask if i had any general questions about National Grid.

In general most work days were quite well balanced between time spent working on projects, meetings with time available for small breaks for tea and a longer break for lunch, however there were some days where I was quite busy balancing multiple projects leading to not much work to do after these were done.

The office I worked in during my placement had a welcoming environment where the people were friendly and warm towards me as a new starter, especially within my direct team where it was quite a tight knit community where everyone got along and people could have a laugh during breaks from work.

Before joining the company I and the other placement students undertook a training course to help us transition into an office environment at National Grid. There was a follow up to this session at the end of the placement. There was also some mandatory training around personal development in the middle of the year as well as the opportunity to seek training in a number of areas.

Future employment prospects within National Grid are very appealing to me as during this year I have learnt that I am very interested in the energy industry and there is also a very highly rated graduate scheme available to me at the end of my placement which can lead into a wide range of roles as moving within the company is flexible.

Most days at work I socialised with the other placement students at lunchtime. There was also several outings organised among the placement students throughout the year. Among my team there was also several social drinks organised just in general when people felt like it and also for when members left the team.

For someone like me who does not own a car the places in which it was easiest to commute where either Warwick or Leamington Spa. In the end I found fairly well priced accommodation within Leamington Spa, however this was a bit of an outlier as most other places were more expensive. Furthermore the cost of things like the cinema was more than I was used to.

There was a fairly small choice of clubs to go to if that is what you want for nightlife, however there were plenty of pubs accommodating to a wide variety of people. Take my opinion with a grain of salt because I'm not bothered about the nightlife and don't have a good basis to compare it to.