Quality Engineer Review

My placement was enjoyable in that I had a lot of opportunities within work to progress, and to take on different task within my department, as well as to lead the direction of which projects I had. However the downside that I had was being the sole intern at my site but I was quickly able to make other friends here.

At my internship I have felt like a strongly valued member of the team, I am given real work and I am able to ask for feedback or other opportunities from my manager or other work colleagues. The work can be daunting initally but any issues are easily resloved by speaking to the right people, and over the year I have been recognised as an expert in certain fields and processes and I have not only people at my site asking ofr help, but people from other sites and companies as well

Suppourt and guidance has been easy to come by at Eaton, there is a wealth of knowledge in the form of managers experience and online resources available to all Eaton emloyees, some of the knowledge can be difficult to navigate but when found can be useful in all projects. Suppourt comes in the form of twice a week tier meetings inside the departmental team as well as monthly 1to1 HR Meetings and quarterly 'Early Talent Forum' addtionally I sit right by my bosses office so it is easy for me to go there for suppourt

Work would vary from frantically busy to a more relaxed standard day. There are daily task to complete which take up roughly a quarter of my time dependant; as well as project work to do. In times where there is a lull in work I have been able to ask for more, however I quickly found this not to be a good idea, because projects that have been on a lull may return in full force along with the new projects taken up leaving you with not enough time to juggle the work load.

During my placement I was the sole co-ordiator/owner of several large projects or processes around the site. These were large projects with the key stakeholders being managers in regional positions, and impacts that are site wide directly affecting 25% of the personel and indirectly the whole site. I also travelled to different sites to share work I had done, including a trip to France where I travelled by myself and stayed for 3 days.

Soft skills developed at work such as confidence, presentation and tiome management skills will be very useful for my work at uni. However specific engineering skills I have used on my degree such as CAD and maths related skills I have not developed as much. But I have got a greater appreciaition as to how they are applied to the business.

The atmosphere is quite relaxed, with an early finish on fridays and a casual work attire. There were a few work does over the year for an opportunity to socialise outside of work and everyone is friendly and easy to talk to, managers know the name of all employees on site

My work placement had a lot of fluidity and the opportunity to select the direction of your growth however there were several pertinent issues over the year which I had to focus on as they arrived. Overally it still felt very organised and there was always more work to do in my department

There was a lot of development from colleagues and managers when I sought feedback, there were also several resources to use on the companies internal site for development. Outisde of this there were rapid improvement events that came with training and organised events offsite for all the interns in training soft skills.

I am currently in talks with coming back to work after, there are several grad schemes available and one that works with the iMECHE to achieve chartership in a norganised and fast pace

I was the only placement student at my site, however at the intern training days I was able to make friends with osme of the interns and talk to them outside of work, through this connection I have made good friends, been to visit some of the interns and even been on holiday with 2 of them.

Cost of living was average with no student accomodation around, I pay £450 without bills for a one person studio flat. I live in the small town which has a few pubs for socialising, and there is a nightclub which requires a bus to get to and a quite expensive taxi to get back

There is one night club in the area which takes a 40 minute bus to reach and a £30 taxi to get back from. Aside from that the pubs in the area are ok, and stay open fairly late people are friendly and it is easy to meet people in the area just by getting a drink at the pub but this can be daunting when you are by yourself or not a social person

There have been a few opportunities such as bike rides and walks. There is also the chance to get involved in the councils, such as communication, charity or well-being. But these activities take place within work