Interior Trim Planner - Bespoke Woodshop Review

Very much enjoyed the year, great experience and would fully reccommend doing a year long placement to everyone studying.

Part of being an intern is having to do jobs which aren't necessarily the most important or relevant and this obviously makes you feel undervalued however, i understand the reason behind it. Few months in when people get to know you and your skills i felt much more valued and more a member of the team.

I was my managers first intern and it showed. However i felt that i managed the situation well as i am independant and found jobs to do myself by asking other people. I did attempt to have more frequent meetings with my manager but this rarely occured due to higher proirity meetings.

i went through stages of being very busy and doing ten hour days to having little on all week. Because i wanted to learn as much as i could whenever i was bored i did try to find new challanges/jobs wherever i could and this kept me busy when i had little work scheduled.

At the start i felt like i had very little responsibilty as i was undertaking very mondane tasks. However, as the year went on i started picking up some very important jobs which made me feel very valued and important which i very much enjoyed and this made me work even harder.

Major skills i learn where CATIA v5 3D modelling software, how to use a 3D printer and how to run a laser cutter. These will majorly benefit my manufacturing knowledge and skills. I also have improved my excel skills. However, i believe the most important skills i have learnt this year are the people/interaciton skills which you can really only learn in practise.

Atmosphere was mixed, depending on weather and working hours. Most were friendly and helpful but again this majorally depended on whether people were in the office working on saturdays. The office was also very crampt at one stage and this made people feel undervalued and lowered the office moral in general.

The organisation of the internship, i feel, was terrible. There was no structure in terms of regular meetings or reviews with anyone from HR or management and i feel like this could really affect an intern who is not confident to speak up for themselves. I feel like RR needs to improve this for future interns.

The company did not invest at all in terms of training. It was down to my manager and myself to take the oppotunity to learn as much as i could. In terms of development there is no review stage at all, which is why there is no shorttrack from internship to graduate as they don't grade the interns as far as i am aware.

There is no shortcut scheme between the internship and the graguate programme. There has been small chitchat about coming back however i have two more years at uni and then i am interested in a new challange such that i have something to compare this experience with. It is appealing to come back so we shall see what the future holds.

there were about 50 interns starting at the same time so we all got to know each other very well and this ensured that there was a good social scene and was one of the highlights of the internship programme. Without the social scene living in Chichester would have been tough.

cost of living is fairly reasonable. Rent was around 450 pcm pp and cost of living is ok. Chichester as a hub is fairly quiet however, as there are lots of interns at RR we made a good effort to make the most of the town and regularly went to the pub and single club here.

Nightlife was very limited to one bar which terns into a club late at night. Portsmouth and Southampton are about thirty minutes away on the train if needed. Again if it wasnt for the strong number of interns at work the nightlife would have been very quiet and insignificent indeed.

There were no organised trips through work. But independently we did organise a range of activities such as playing football on an astro which we could hire out. There was a group of us who all joined the same gym and there is a bowling ally which we occasionly go to as a group.