Placement Student Review

I loved my placement and has absolutely been the highlight of my degree so far. It gave me a great opportunity to see what working in the real world of my chosen industry would be like and gave me a great break from the student bubble!

I felt valued by my colleagues and my managers. My role was very operational and I spent the majority of the year as part of the front-line team and helped my managers out of some sticky situations on many occasions so I think they valued my enthusiasm and flexibility.

I was given a mentor who had been on the graduate scheme so had been through a similar process to me. However, as they weren't based on the same sites as me, it was difficult for them to relate to some situations or issues that I had. I moved around the company a lot as part of the scheme and so i had multiple managers, many of which didn't really understand my role as a placement student and the opportunities they were supposed to be giving me to help me develop as a trainee manager. In this sense, I had to be proactive in asking for these opportunities and after that they were very helpful with my professional development.

It varied from site to site but generally I was busy and on my feet for 8 hours solidly and I loved that! I hate being sat down doing nothing and this role gave me a great balance of doing practical work as well as interacting with customers. It was a little stressful on a few days but nothing that I couldn't handle.

I had no responsibility in the first 4-5 months as I gained experience in the company which I was happy about. It gave me the opportunity to learn enough that during the last six months of my placement I was appointed as a supervisor and subsequently had lots of responsibilities from operational to administrative which helped me develop lots of valuable professional skills. I would say that there is no supervisory position planned into the scheme, I earned that responsibility through my own hard work.

I was able to learn a lot about an industry which should but isn't covered in detail at my university. It gave me my first opportunity to use people management skills which will inevitably help me in the future. It gave me a great grounding in the contract catering industry, so much so that I was offered to return to the company after graduating and am seriously considering furthering a career with this company or at least in this sector.

Generally a very positive place. I didn't actually work in an office (bit assuming of you, rate my placement!) as I worked in a catering environment. Some colleagues were a little negative in some sites where they had been in the job for a while and were getting bored or were exhausted by customers because they weren't really cut out for providing excellent customer service. I worked alongside people from all over the world and that made for a really interesting and diverse team, a lot of whom has great work ethics which helped to a conducive and positive working environment where we worked hard but had fun doing so.

Pretty well organised. I didn't know which site I was going to be working at until about 4 weeks before it began so that made me a little anxious but my first day was at the company's HQ so they took me to my site and gave me a tour which put me at ease. I was moved to many different sites during the year and undertook specialist barista coffee training with a new supplier and all of this was organised pretty late on. luckily, being in London meant that everywhere was very easy to get to but I suspect that some people would have found this amount of adapating and lack of routine quite hard but I quite like change so it wasn't too much of a problem for me.

A fair amount. there were training sessions that I could've attended but they were all located in central London and I spent a lot of the placement in outskirts of London so couldn't reach the sessions. They could probably do a bit more work with me, perhaps as much as they would do with the graduates because my scheme covered exactly the same content as theirs, just without the opportunity to become an Assistant Manager at the end.

They're good. I could definitely apply for the graduate scheme which I would be able to complete a lot quicker than normal because of my previous experience within the company. Alternatively, Ive been advised that I could just apply for an Assistant Manager position at a small site where my responsibilities would be given to me incrementally.

It varied depending on sites. The last two sites I worked at there was a good social scene as we were all similar ages and had common interests. Other places had very wide age ranges though so people had kids which meant their social life outside of work was pretty minimal.

Pretty expensive as I lived in London. Rent, travel and after work drinks were the main culprits! I did however save a lot of money on food because I got to eat breakfast and lunch for free at work. I wouldn't change living in London for the world though, it was one of the best things I could have ever done and I know that I would like to live there again one day, if not straight after graduation.

Very lively as I worked in central London, particularly in the Bank area and Oxford Street. There were plenty of bars and restaurants around wherever I worked so I could meet colleagues and other friends after work and go to somewhere new every time.

Not at all really. Only in a social situation like work drinks, celebrating someone's birthday but that would only be every couple of weeks or so. I think they had volunteering opportunities but they weren't advertised at all.